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Now I know 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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https://archive.org/details/nowiknowprimerofOOmacc 


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NOW I KNOW 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK + BOSTON + CHICAGO - DALLAS 
ATLANTA + SAN FRANCISCO 


MACMILLAN & CO., Limutrep 
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TORONTO 


NOW | KNOW _ 


A Primer of Faith 










UEC 17 1925 


‘Now I know in part; but then shall I Lain OGICAL eww 


know even as also I have been known.”’ 
—I Corinthians 13:12 


BY 


JOHN ARCHIBALD MacCALLUM 


Pew Dork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


1924 
All rights reserved 


CoprrigHt, 1924, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
Set up and printed. 
Published August, 1924. 


Printed in the United States of America by 
THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK. 


THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY 
DEDICATED TO 


MY WIFE 


IN GRATEFUL APPRECIATION OF 
HER CRITICISM, SYMPATHY, 
ENCOURAGEMENT AND 
COMRADESHIP 


ts alae 


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PREFACE 


This book is a simple transcript from experience. It 
makes no attempt to systematize the doctrines of the 
Christian religion. While it deals with some of the great 
theological ideas, this is only because I believe I have 
worked them out in my own thought and made them a 
part of myself. Doubtless many truths essential to an 
adequate explanation of the Christian faith are omitted, 
but that is more the author’s misfortune than his fault. 
I have spoken only of what I know, and not of what the 
great of old or of the present have told me. True I have 
quoted, though sparingly, from the Bible and other 
sources, but my motive has been to express my thought 
more forcibly and bring out its reasonableness more 
clearly rather than to confirm my position by an appeal to 
authority. 

Whether we like it or not, the day of external authority 
is gone in the religion of the educated man. Never again 
will a reference to Genesis be accepted as proof that the 
earth is flat. When the leaders of the church fall back 
upon authority and attempt to tell men today what they 
must believe, they are making a fatal mistake. If the 
men of tomorrow are to be saved to Christianity, Chris- 
tianity must be made acceptable to them in the open 
market of ideas. I believe that this can be done, but 
only if Christianity is presented as a vitalizing experience 
rather than as a series of propositions which must be 
accepted without question. 

Doubtless I shall be charged with rationalism in trying 
to establish a concordat between my inherited faith on the 
one side, and my acceptance of the findings of science on 

7 


8 PREFACE 


the other. If I were to have choice forced upon me, how- 
ever, I would prefer to be called a rationalist rather than 
an apostle of irrationalism. The church that contradicts 
facts which are taught in every secondary school in the 
civilized world, and by implication in primary schools as 
well, will soon become a spent force and take a faded 
place in the catalogue of exhausted influences. But the 
real leaders in the church are aware that their Christian- 
ity forces no such sorry course upon them. 

These are turbulent days in the field of religious 
thought. Many young people are turning from the 
church because they believe that to be a Christian, it is 
necessary to acknowledge the authority of traditions 
which their reason has finally ejected from their conscious- 
ness. If I can help any of them to disengage the essential 
truth from the dogmatic forms in which it has been im- 
prisoned and reveal its possibilities as a vital force in 
their lives, I shall be happy. Having come to the House 
of Faith myself by the Road of Doubt, is it too much to 
hope that I may be able to pilot some of my youthful 
fellow travelers safely through the arid wastes of con- 
troversy, recrimination and denial to the mountain of the 
House of the Lord ? 

J. A. MacO. 
Philadelphia, April, 1924. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
PaWHAT L: KNows ABOUT :GoDy 0 OMA 13 
Pisa BAT) DOK NOWs ABOUTACHRIST ys f chrsliauilta i: 21 
III. WHat I Know Asovut THE Hoty Spirit... 27 
IV. WHar I Know Aspour Man. ......... 34 
Vee VVHATIL MNOW ABOUT OINWs haga) ci eled Nasi 42 
VI. WHat I Know Axsovut THE INCARNATION. . . 52 
VII. WHat I Know Axsout THE ATONEMENT. ... 61 
VIII. WHat I Know Aspout REGENERATION .... 71 
IX. WHat I Know Axpout SALVATION ...... 79 
X. WHat I Know ABout THE CHRISTIAN... . 89 


XI. WHat I Know Apovut THE CuRisTIAN’s Duty . 98 
XII. Wuat I Know Axsovut THE CHRISTIAN’s Rewarp 110 
XIU. War I Know Apout Praymr....: .. . 122 
XIV. WHat I Know Axsout CHRISTIANITY. .... 136 


XV. WHat I Know: ApouT THE CHURCH ..... 153 


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WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GOD 


r 

God! 

How vast is the thought that lies behind the word! In 
its fullness the idea of God is beyond the reach of the 
mind of man. Yet we cannot do without either the 
thought or the word, which is but a flickering symbol of 
the thought. True, some deny that there is a God, but 
their very denial is an inverted belief in his existence. 
Apart from God we can neither explain ourselves nor the 
world. And so, with perfect assurance, I affirm that 
God 1s. 

This is the first thing I know about him. Even though 
my knowledge should stop here, I should have a solid 
foundation for the exercise of my faith. For while there 
would still be many other things I should wish to know, 
my heart would not be left in blank despair so long as I 
am sure that I owe my existence to a Being some of whose 
qualities must find a faint reflection in my poor self. 

For if I know that God exists, my knowledge cannot 
stop there. It is pushed forward logically another step. 
Whence did I come in making my “willy-nilly” appear- 
ance in the world? When I say “I,” I affirm my ex- 
istence. How is this existence to be explained? I feel, I 
think, I look up at the skies with their myriads of stars, 
and wonder how they came to be. It is a mystery, men 
tell me, beyond our finding out. Half baffled, I look into 
myself and find that I can follow in thought the move- 
ments of the stars and appreciate the beauty of river and 
mountain and shifting clouds. I can mark out the courses 
of the seasons, winter, spring, summer, and autumn. 

13 


14 Now I Know 


Again I am driven to one conclusion. God must have 
made the universe with its suns and stars. It is an ex- 
pression of himself, or in the phrase of Goethe, his living 
garment. To him who can read its deeper meaning it 
tells of the power, wisdom, beauty and love of its Maker. 


ABE 


To the mind as it strives to increase its reach we can 
set no boundaries. We are never sure in regard to any 
place at which it stops that it will stop there long. Know- 
ing as I do that God is, and that he is the creator of the 
world and of myself, I am impelled to move on and ask 
what is his character? What are the qualities of his 
nature? Is he good? This is no easy question. How 
do we know that God is not indifferent, capricious, cruel 
or malevolent? In fact there are moods in which we all 
think thus of God, for the soul has its weathers, and in 
hours of storm and darkness when hope fades and faith is 
depressed, it seems as though God takes a grim delight in 
driving his creatures out into the storm and dispossessing 
them of their joys. The Psalmist felt thus when he cried 
—“T am come in deep waters where the floods overflow 
me. I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried; mine 
eyes fail me while I wait for my God.” There is no 
denying that a strong brief can be prepared against the 
goodness of God. Why do the virtuous die and the 
wicked live on in their wickedness? Why does the light- 
ning strike the church and leave the house of evil mirth 
unscathed? Why does injustice so often triumph over 
justice ? 

In any attempt to answer these questions we must bear 
in mind that we see only in part. The entire field of the 
divine activity and purpose would have to be taken into 
account before a demonstrable conclusion could be reached, 
and that field is beyond our ken. Vast though the evil in 
the part we do see, however, it is more than balanced by 
the good. Why is my soul cast down and disquieted 


Wuat I Know Axsovut Gop 15 


within me? Its state of upheaval is due to the good that 
is struggling for expression in and through me. I am 
discontented not because I am vexed, but because of my 
longing for better things. What is the source of this long- 
ing? It isa part of my nature, and as we have seen, that 
is rooted in God. By whatever methods or processes our 
moral standards have arisen, they always and everywhere 
trace back to God. Thus it follows that the good over- 
balances the evil even at this immature stage in the 
world’s development. 

Our fathers made the mistake of dividing people into 
two classes—saints and sinners. To them a man was 
either saved or unsaved, one or the other. But if I am 
saved in this sense, I am through growing and little or no 
incentive is left for strenuous action. The truth is, I am 
saved in part and unsaved in part. In varying degrees 
all men share this experience with me. Here is a sailor, 
for instance, rough in manner, coarse in grain, bestial in 
appetite. A crisis arises. He jumps overboard to save a 
child, risking his life or giving it perhaps for another, 
who had no claim upon him except that of a common 
humanity. “An impulse,” you say. Yes, but whence 
came an impulse which could transform that lewd drunk- 
ard of a few days ago into a hero? The secret of his 
heroism is the divine fire within him that even his worst 
debauchery could never fully quench. Because man par- 
takes of the divine nature, he is never satisfied for long 
with what he is or what he has done and therein lies the 
assurance that in the end the good will come to its own 
and is in fact gaining ground all the time. Movements 
for the better treatment of children, the emancipation of 
women, fresh advances in social and industrial justice, 
and an enlarged sense of neighborliness make it evident 
that the path of the human family is upward. ‘The 
springs of these movements are in God. I know that he is 
good, because I know that man is potentially good. 


16 Now I Know 


III 


Again by force of logic I am driven to another affirma- 
tion about God. If he is, and is the creator, and is good, 
he must be a person. It is common for men to love beauty 
far beyond their power to create. But no man ever 
created a beauty which he did not love. God could not 
be the source of the beauty of the world and not be in 
love with it. The fact that he is the inspirer of my purer 
aims indicates that his nature shares these aims with ours. 
If this is true, then he must be in his infinite sphere of 
action what I am in my finite sphere, a person and not a 
mere force, or “power that makes for righteousness,” for 
no vague impersonal tendency could have blundered into 
the creation of the world and myself. 

Among many other qualities two essentials of personal- 
ity stand out. The first is awareness, the distinguishing 
of one’s self from other selves and other things. The 
second essential of personality is conscious will or pur- 
pose. Since the creature cannot surpass the creator, I am 
sure that God distinguishes himself from all other selves 
and that he has a purpose toward which he is steadfastly 
moving. His distinguishing of himself from me estab- 
lishes a definite relationship between us. Its nature has 
already been implied. I am his child. He is my Father. 

The Psalmist understood. “Like as a father pitieth 
his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” 
Thus out of my experience the teaching of Jesus that God 
is the Father of all men is confirmed. Fatherhood in- 
volves interest and love. His watchful eye is ever upon 
me to reprove my selfish waywardness; to undergird my 
weakness, to quicken my finer sensibilities, to call to 
fruitful activity the noblest possibilities of my being. 
The recognition of this sublime relationship prompted the 
Psalmist to cry out in an exalted mood, ‘Bless the Lord, 
O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.” 

The fatherhood of God imposes definite obligations 
upon me toward other men and makes them all my neigh- 


Wuat I Know Asout Gop Ve 


bors whether they live near or far and no matter what 
their race, color or faith. Meantime, whatever my cir- 
cumstances, I am assured by it of a hearing at the Su- 
preme Court of the universe. Even though I am guilty 
of willful disregard of the divine law, because he is my 
Father, he will hear the cry of my penitent heart and 
in his mercy will comfort and forgive. 


IV 


In the midst of such reflections, however, the skeptic 
within me may rise and try to shake my faith. Like his 
prototype of old, suppose he asks maliciously, ‘‘Where is 
thy God?” In answer I can only say that he is every- 
where. ‘Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither 
shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into 
heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, 
thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and 
dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall 
thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” 
“But that is too vague,” says the skeptic, or obverse side 
of my believing mind, which is trying to control my 
thought. ‘It means so much that it means nothing. 
Where is the heavenly throne in this infinite universe of 
which you have been speaking in such grandiose terms ? 
How can God hear so many prayers at the same time, 
coming as they do from so many places ?”’ 

I confess that I cannot fully resolve the mystery. I 
see only dimly as through a darkened glass. But that God 
is everywhere is not more mysterious than that I am in so 
many places at the same time. It is an axiom of science 
that a thing is where it works. I go into a wireless tele- 
phone station and speak. What happens? Wherever 
there is a receiving mechanism within the thousands of 
square miles covered by the radius of that station, my 
voice may be heard. Where am I? Wherever my voice 
reaches and it may possibly be wherever my thought is, 
in London, Venice, the hills of Mars or the valleys of 


18 Now I Know 


Neptune. If it is true that my mind’s active reach covers 
such wide ground, surely it imposes no impossible strain 
upon my faith to believe that God is everywhere and that 
if my heart is attuned to his infinite heart of love, I shall 
hear his voice and understand his will in so far as it 
relates to my own duty and welfare. That is all I need to 
know. 

I can not speak for those who have arrived at the con- 
viction that God is not needed to explain their own ex- 
istence and that of the universe. or me it is simpler, 
easier and immeasurably more satisfying to accept God 
as the final and only worthy explanation of the world. 
I would be just, and that makes me positive he is just, 
and his justice will not mock me or deceive me, but will 
lead me on through the encircling gloom of my ignorance 
and disappointment to the city with foundations which he 
is building of human souls that share his purposes and 
in their own dim way think his thoughts after him, striv- 
ing to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with 
God. I know that God is, that he is the creator of the 
world and me, and that he is good, that he is my Father, 
and that he is always with me, ‘‘closer than breathing, 
nearer than hands or feet.” 


Vv 


Thus far our discussion has dealt with what may be 
called the intellectual approach to God, based upon 
grounds suggested by reason. I cannot turn from this 
subject, however, without the admission that ultimately 
the sense of God is a matter of faith. For however con- 
vincing the preponderance of the arguments in support 
of the belief that God exists, absolute proof is beyond the 
power of our human reason. There is always some 
ground for the opposite conclusion, for God cannot be 
seen as a man is seen or heard as the wind is heard. We 
may say that God is speaking in the wind but that is not 


Wuat I Know Asout Gop 19 


evidence to the doubter, for to him this sound is only a 
record of the play of physical forces. It is a matter of 
the kind of interpretation employed whether or not it 
points to God. The results in the way of interpretation 
depend upon the qualities of the interpreting mind. 

For this reason a healthy conviction of the reality of 
God requires the support of faith, rising with urgent pres- 
sure out of the hidden depths of the soul. Faith is a part 
of the deposit of the race experience in process of ac- 
cumulation through countless generations. And try as 
our conscious minds may to expel it as a shadow or a 
superstition, it refuses to be dislodged or to abdicate its 
directive power over our lives during the long stretches 
of time that our thought is otherwise engaged. ‘‘The 
heart has reasons that reason cannot understand.” From 
immemorial ages our forbears believed in gods. In 
process of time this belief moved on and out into the 
persuasion that there is but one God, who rules the world 
and is over all and through all and in all. This convic- 
tion is stored up in the reservoirs of race experience of 
which every man’s nature is a conduit. No man can 
escape from its pressure. It is always pushing our 
thought back to God. 

Now and then some rebel tries to startle us by the asser- 
tion that the modern mind cannot believe in God. Timid 
souls are frightened by such statements when they come 
from men of education who seem to speak with authority. 
But we need not fear. The racial instincts which prompt 
us to look upward will not give us rest until we find rest 
in the end to which faith always directs our souls. The 
ground swell of the ages moves against the skeptic. The 
deep within the heart of man ever responds in the end to 
the deep of the Eternal. Even those of us who remain 
dumb in the face of the barrage of doubts poured forth by 
the skeptic, no match at all for his superior intellectual 
agility, can still feel undismayed, for we know that he 1s 


20 Now I Know 


wrong. The hopes and fears of our souls reach out un- 
satisfied until they reach God. Faith is the wellspring 
which nourishes a healthy mind and makes it fruitful. It 
is the dynamo where the power is generated by which we 
rise to holiness and become one with God. 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT CHRIST 


I 

Christ! 

How familiar is the word throughout the modern world, 
both in itself and in the various settings of phrase in 
which it is placed: Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus, the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and more recent forms such as the Eternal 
Christ, and the Christ that is to be. Originally an adjec- 
tive it has come to be a noun and a synonym for Jesus. 
True, Jesus and Christ are indissolubly associated in the 
mind, for historically Jesus is the Christ, that is, the 
anointed one. But for practical purposes it is better to use 
the name Jesus for the man of Galilee who lived his life 
on earth, amid conditions and under limitations akin to 
those all men share. This enables us to reserve the name 
Christ for the divinely majestic and timeless personality 
which the historic Jesus has grown to be. He has set such 
forces in motion that he is almost universally recognized 
as supreme among the children of God, the Father’s 
Eternal Son. 

But what do I know of him? At least I can affirm that 
Jesus of Nazareth lived on earth about 1900 years ago. 
This may seem a meagre foundation upon which to build, 
but it gives me a point of departure. Few indeed of those 
who lived at a much more recent date have left any 
record of their experience or influence upon their genera- 
tion that would enable us to tell that they had ever lived 
at all. That Jesus, who was later called Christ, was born 
and grew up, worked and taught, healed and preached, 
loved, suffered, and died, is as well attested a fact as any 
in history. Various writings have been preserved in 

21 


22 Now I Know 


which the story of his life is set forth in sufficient detail. 
While he himself wrote no books, he made such an impres- 
sion on others that they were impelled to write down both 
the message he proclaimed and also an account of the 
influences it set in motion in a multitude of minds. These 
records also tell of his courage, sympathy, wisdom, fore- 
sight and love. Altogether they present such a picture of 
gracious and winsome manhood, actuated by the master 
passion of love for others, that reverent affection is kin- 
dled in my heart as I read the story. 


II 


When I examine the details of his earthly experience it 
gives me satisfaction to know that he passed through all 
the stages that every man must traverse, from a babe in 
his mother’s arms to the full power of his manhood. He 
increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God 
and man, grew physically, intellectually, socially and 
spiritually. He learned of God at his mother’s knee, and 
later in the village school connected with the synagogue 
in Nazareth, his knowledge expanded as he read the 
ancient scriptures and came to understand the work and 
motives of Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and other great men 
of his race. 

Then in the course of the years the obligations of life 
fell upon him and he went to work in the carpenter shop 
where doubtless he had spent many an hour as a child 
watching Joseph as with sure stroke he shaped yokes for 
the oxen of the neighboring husbandmen, or tables for the 
housewives of the village. He took his place at the bench 
and learned in the school of toil the practical lessons 
which work always teaches. But beyond his day’s task 
he saw the workers of the world. He learned to share 
their hopes and sympathize with them in their disappoint- 
ments. ‘The still sad music of humanity” was always 
with him, and as he pondered on the sins and sorrows and 
injustices of life, he grew in insight and in mental and 


Wuat I Know Azsovt Curist 93 


spiritual power. The day came when the light of dis- 
covery broke and his creative spirit overflowed the shop 
and the village. Then he went out as a teacher and 
prophet to tell others the way of life that had opened out 
before him. 


Tift 


One Sabbath day in the village synagogue, under the 
power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus declared himself as the 
chosen of God whose duty it was to preach the gospel to 
the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to announce deliver- 
ance to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to set 
at liberty the bruised and to proclaim the acceptable year 
of the Lord. Behind this declaration lay years of train- 
ing and meditation, in school and shop, and the stern dis- 
cipline of the wilderness, where he had thought through 
the problems of destiny. As always, his reward was the 
reward of the prophet. His townsmen drove him forth: 
his family doubted his sanity. 

But undismayed he continued to teach with the au- 
thority born of experience. He did not quote the scribes 
to verify his affirmations, but set forth the new-born truth 
as it came naked from his soul. Men listened to his 
words for the life that was in them. They felt his power. 
Here was a teacher different from any they had ever 
known. His language was the language of the people and 
not of the schools. His illustrations were taken from the 
homely facts of every day, the wind, the setting sun, the 
flowers, the sower sowing his seed, the plowman in the 
field, the women grinding at the mill, the shepherd tend- 
ing his sheep and finding that one was lost. The people 
hung upon his words because they understood him and 
felt that he understood them. And what was his theme ? 
God! He had no other subject. He told them God was 
their Father, and that he cared for them and would forgive 
them if they would only ask him. He told them of the 
purpose of God to give them life in this world and the 


94. Now I Know 


world to come. The effect was wonderful. They grew in 
wisdom and understanding as they listened to him. 
I know Jesus as the supreme teacher of the ages. 


IV 


As he went about giving instruction and inspiration 
he often came upon the bruised and broken, the lame, the 
halt and blind. He met men and women suffering some 
distemper of the mind, and he suffered with them be- 
cause of his infinite tenderness of heart. And though his 
chief motive was to teach and make men better acquainted 
with God, where opportunity offered, he often felt con- 
strained to exercise his gift of healing by curing their 
bodily ills. Many indeed were the occasions when at his 
recreative touch of hand or heart smouldering faith burst 
into the blaze that brought health to those who had suf- 
fered so long that they had given up hope of recovery. 
Only incidentally was he the great physician. The mar- 
velous cures he wrought must not be allowed to obscure 
our vision of his fundamental purpose. Bodily health is 
good, but it is not the chief end of man. To know God 
is my destiny and some know him better through a shat- 
tered body than others through a well one. I know Jesus 
as the supreme physician of the ages for body, mind and 
soul. 


Vv 


In the New Testament record, Jesus is also spoken of 
as a prophet, and without doubt in him prophecy reached 
its zenith. There had been great prophets before him, 
Isaiah, Hosea, Micah, and Jeremiah, and no one did them 
greater honor than he. There have also been great 
prophets since, but he is easily first. Much damage has 
been done to our religion by a mistaken idea of the 
prophet’s work. His chief business is to interpret the 
time in which he lives and show his own generation the 
way out of its difficulties. The prophet is always a man 


Wuat I Know Azsoutr Curist 25 


of rugged principle, who can tell as a matter of principle 
and not of calculation or second sight, the ultimate drift 
of the tendencies of his time. If true religion is on the 
wane and materialism on the increase, he is not deceived 
but warns his fellows to open their blind eyes to the doom 
they will bring upon their nation unless they cease from 
their worship of false gods and every man deal fairly with 
his brother. In so far as he is a prophet he detaches him- 
self from the local and the temporary interests and con- 
flicts and in speaking single mindedly in terms of princi- 
ple, he speaks to every age. Here Jesus stands pre- 
eminent. 

Scarcely a sentence of which we have record fell from 
his lips that is not as true to-day as when it was spoken. 
“Judge not, that ye be not judged.” “For with what judg- 
ment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure 
ye mete, it shall be measured to you again,” ‘‘The king- 
dom of God cometh not with observation.” “Strait is the 
gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and 
few there be that find it.” Such utterances are beacons 
today as much as they were then and will be in the 
indefinite future. JI know Jesus as supreme among the 
prophets of all the ages. 


ya 


These and other qualities of mind and heart which he 
possessed in a unique degree account for the impression 
that Jesus made upon his generation. Many became his 
disciples and others paid him almost equal tribute by be- 
coming his bitter enemies. They saw that his teaching 
would undermine their privileges, so they rejected him 
who was their greatest friend. “He came unto his own, 
and his own received him not.” ‘To win their affection 
and support he would have had to compromise with truth, 
but his first and only loyalty was to God. His Father’s 
business was always on his heart. Some understood him 
in part at least. They sat at his feet to learn of God and 


26 Now I Know 


his kingdom. They left all and followed him. When he 
died for truth and right, with clearer insight they laid 
new hold upon his motive. They saw through his mis- 
sion as they had never seen when he was present with 
them, and their souls became flaming torches spreading 
his gospel everywhere, so that in death he was immeasur- 
ably stronger than in life. Whatever we may think of 
him, or however we may explain him, the fact remains 
that in righteous influence and personal power for good 
no one has ever lived who can be compared with him. 

Thus far I have been speaking of those human qual- 
ities which all normal men possess in some degree, but 
which were manifested in Jesus in such fullness that 
during his brief ministry as a teacher and prophet, the 
day soon came when he was recognized as the Eternal Son 
of God. Peter’s answer to his question, “Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God,” sprang from a recog- 
nition of his divine character. Intuitively Peter realized 
that in him the long hope of Israel for a Saviour had been 
fulfilled, and though afterward he may have wavered in 
his conviction at certain times and in certain moods, 
that conviction sustained him and the other disciples after 
the death of their Master and enabled them to lay the 
everlasting foundations of the church which was to bear 
his name. 

The explanation of this power to transform such frail 
men as Matthew, Peter, James and John from obscure, 
simple toilers to world figures is to be found in one fact 
alone, the complete identity of will and purpose between 
Jesus and the Father. ‘I and the Father are one.” “He 
who hath seen me hath seen the Father.” The God I 
know and worship is the God whom I see in Christ. In 
the glory of his purity, his consecration to duty, his sym- 
pathy, his sense of justice, his absolute righteousness, he 
is the revelation of God. In him the qualities of the 
divine take on conerete form. I know Jesus as the Christ, 
the Son of the living God. 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT THE HOLY SPIRIT 


I 


As we pass from God and Christ to a consideration of 
the Holy Spirit, we find ourselves on much more difficult 
ground when it comes to furnishing outward evidence 
that will prove convincing to the doubting mind. While 
it is true that no man has seen God at any time, it is 
equally true that every man has seen a world which makes 
it not unreasonable to believe that God is its author. And 
while interpretations of Christ may vary from the friendly 
view that he is the Eternal Son of God to the snap judg- 
ment that he was an impractical dreamer, who set in 
motion forces he could not control, the fact of Christ is 
unquestioned by every normal mind. 

There is no evidence of the existence of the Holy Spirit 
so obvious to the observer, and indeed there is probably 
no element of the religious life which is more hazy or 
less clearly defined even among educated and devoted 
Christians. To most people “Holy Spirit” is a phrase, 
vague in content, which can neither be explained or un- 
derstood. While I feel no less confident of the existence 
of the Holy Spirit than of the existence of God, I confess 
that it will be difficult for me to set forth my knowledge to 
others with equal force, particularly to those whose tem- 
perament and training are widely different from mine. 


1B! 


Yet I know unmistakably for myself that the Holy 
Spirit exists. The Holy Spirit is the medium in which I 
live. The cynic or the skeptic may point out that my life 
offers little outward evidence of vitalizing contact with this 
inexhaustible source of truth, beauty, goodness and wis- 

27 


28 Now I Know 


dom. The fact remains that were it not for this continuous 
ministry of inspiration, my life would be bereft. Nor is 
the Holy Spirit responsible for my failures. The law of 
eravitation always works whether or not men work with it. 
The Holy Spirit is likewise always at work in and round 
about me, and the fault is mine if I fail to respond. 

Some men speak as though they were the sole benefici- 
aries of the Spirit, but the truth is that all men stand on 
the same ground so far as the ministry of the Spirit is 
concerned. ‘The difference in the religious experiences 
of men is accounted for by their attitude, intimate or 
distant, toward the Spirit. Lack of interest in the values 
of the soul is the outward sign of an inward insensitive- 
ness to the Spirit. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is 
as constant as that of the sunlight. No man has any 
prior claims upon that ministry or any special privileges 
arising from it. The Holy Spirit is everywhere, free as 
the wind and wave, and ready for entrance at the signal 
of welcome into every heart, to inspire, to heal and to 
recreate. 


IIr 


The Holy Spirit may be defined as God in action, the 
creative urge issuing from the Father, in the form of an 
invitation to communion, and imparting the energy of 
the more abundant life to every one who will receive. The 
Spirit guides me into new experiences of truth, and be- 
comes the adventurous urge within my heart also which 
pushes me on into the future with confidence and hope. 

Thus far I have been speaking out of my personal ex- 
perience. Here alone is the fountain-head of that com- 
plete and final authority which gives rise in the mind to 
perfect peace, that direct contact with the sources of 
truth which enables me to say with ringing confidence, “I 
know.” By contrast, there is always room for doubt 
when we depend upon the testimony of others, no matter 
how competent they are. Our experience of their ex- 


Wuat I Know Axsout tHe Hoty Spririr 29 


perience is second-hand and therefore not as vital as our 
own. 

This does not mean, however, that their experience is of 
no value to us. On the contrary, its corroborative value 
is priceless, for it gives an objective background to our 
own experiences. In addition it serves to enlarge our 
horizons and provide us immeasurably more data for the 
carrying on of our individual life experiment than if 
we had been left to our own resources. How poor I 
would be in thought and achievement were it not that 
back of me lies the collective experience of the race which 
we call history! Indirectly I can make this experience 
my own, by passing it through the crucible of my mind. 
How wonderfully it has served me in warning me against 
pitfalls into which others have fallen and showing me the 
bridge of truth that has been built across many a morass 
of error by the sacrifice and the effort of multitudes who 
have traversed the long and difficult road between me 
and that far off day when man left his cave and moved 
toward the dawn. Little did primitive man dream of the 
heights his posterity were to scale. No wandering tribes- 
man in his wildest imaginings had even a remote picture 
of a Galileo, a Shakespeare, a Lincoln, a Pasteur or an 
Edison. Yet potentially all these princes of achievement 
were in the mental womb of those first voyagers who struck 
their tents and moved out, not knowing whither they went. 
A wonderful faith sustained them and enabled them to 
continue in the face of crushing difficulties and perpetual 
disappointments. 

They were my fathers, and I can account for what 
has come of their adventure only by recourse to the in- 
dwelling of the Holy Spirit as the principle of expla- 
nation. They were strengthened and upheld by an inward 
dynamic of which they were probably unconscious, but 
it never failed them. That dynamic was the Spirit of 
God. He alone is the explanation and the cause of the 
upward and onward march of events. Sometimes they 


30 Now I Know 


seem to take the backward trail, but this retrogression 1s 
more than made up in the next advance. The wind 
never controls the tide. Because I can see progress 
running like a golden stream through all the darkness of 
the ages behind, I have confidence that my sense of a 
comforting and sustaining Presence, the spirit of wisdom, 
truth and love within me, is an index of the supreme 
reality that will carry mankind safely through the undis- 
covered future ahead. 

It is a quality of our nature to aspire and hope. The 
instincts of the animal world imprison themselves in a 
stable round of monotony, but man is always ready to 
strike his tents and start again upon the march. With 
him the hope of a better country, “‘a continuing city,” is 
a never failing spur to action. Philosphers may debate 
the question whether the race has advanced or stood still, 
but I rest content in the belief that with all its areas of 
barrenness and failure openly acknowledged, life in our 
modern Christian civilization is immeasurably better than 
life in ancient Rome or Babylon. The Holy Spirit is 
God in history, the key to its tangled course. 


IV 


Are there evidences of the working of the Holy Spirit 
in the social life of our time? Yes! The Holy Spirit 
is the binder which holds mankind together. Even though 
the separating influences of class and racial hatreds make 
sad havoe in our social life, the Spirit is always at work 
like the stars in their courses, supplying the antidote. 
Suspicion is eaten away, and hate though it clings desper- 
ately to its seat is undermined by the slow but sure pro- 
cesses of the Spirit permeating the corporate life of men 
and now again transforming their animosities and alien- 
ations into better understandings and friendlier relations. 

The Holy Spirit is the vital principle in society. It 
does its work silently like the sun and is always trying its 
best to bear fruit. Sometimes periods of infertility in- 


Wuat I Know Azsovr tur Hotry Sprritr 31 


tervene but in the end conditions yield to this silent power. 
The Spirit of God that dwells in man never consents to an 
armistice in its war with his evil passions. 

In the autumn the leaves take on rich colorings which 
are the prelude to their end. Soon they begin to fall. 
Frost, winds and rains hurry the process, and in a few 
weeks after the first touch of the autumnal artist, stripped 
branches only are left to face the driving hails and snows 
of winter. But the leaves of one tree defy the storms to do 
their worst. This is the scrub oak. After the rest of 
the forest has been laid bare, poplars, maples, elms and 
beeches, the scrub oak remains clothed as in the summer 
except that the green has turned to brown. Nature plans 
a new offensive and makes a fierce and sustained attack. 
The north winds bear down upon it freighted with snow 
and hail, but the brown leaves cling stubbornly to their 
stems. 

Then comes the spring. The snows melt and the grass 
begins to grow in the sunshine. The sap creeps upward 
through the boles of the trees, and moves steadily out 
along the branches. When it reaches the tips of the scrub 
oak to which the old leaves cling, they offer no further 
resistance but drop silently to their graves. What driving 
rain, snow and hail could not do is done by the gentle 
silent resurgence of life. 

So it is with the Holy Spirit. Our motives may be 
selfish, materialistic, barren, but the Spirit is always 
working within to break down our stubborn denials of 
truth and love, and lay the foundation for that fuller 
life which is to be “in a city with foundations, whose 
builder and maker is God.” The Holy Spirit is the su- 
preme unifying influence in all our human relations, the 
breath of God in man. 


Vv 


But the critic enters his caveat in the form of a 
question—what are the inter-relations between God and 


B32 Now I Know 


Christ and the Holy Spirit? Is each separate from the 
others? Are there three persons each with his own in- 
itiative and self-determination? If so, how can it be they 
always arrange to work in harmony, or which is the final 
arbiter of their actions? There is nothing to be gained 
by denying the relevancy of such questions and a host of 
others of like import that might be asked. We live in a 
world of mystery and at best the conclusions of the human 
mind are provisional. Nevertheless, on reflection the re- 
lations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not so 
baffling as they seem when first presented. We should 
remember that the word “person” used with the relations 
of the three members of the Godhead as a context has a 
different history and meaning from its meaning in pop- 
ular speech. If this were better known many an argument 
and many a doubt raised by the Trinity, itself a word 
which does not occur in the Bible, would never take 
place or be entertained. 

The Latin word persona is from the drama and means 
character, in the sense of the role that one is taking. 
Accordingly, God in three persons meant originally God 
in three aspects, manifestations or characters. God ap- 
pears in three characters: in himself in his absolute 
majesty, hidden, almighty, inflnite, the source of all our 
life, the fountain-head of all our being. He appears in 
Christ, the Son, the revelation of himself, the incarnation 
of truth, mercy, justice, love, courage, faith and hope, in 
terms which all may understand. He speaks also in the 
Creative Spirit, working in and through the universe, 
finding highest form in human life, and giving his fairest 
and most alluring promise in that ideal state which man 
has now more reason to believe he will one day reach 
than his rude ancestors had reason to believe such a civil- 
ization as ours would one day be attained. In the Holy 
Spirit he is working in and manifesting himself through 
the life of men on earth. Their struggles for justice, 
brotherhood and peace when reduced to the simplest terms 


Wuat I Know Asoutr tur Honty Sprreir 33 


are the outworking of his indwelling spirit of wisdom and 
understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear 
of the Lord. 

“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right 
spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; 
and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.” 


GLORY BE TO THE FATHER, AND TO THE 
BuNeaN DOP THE HOLY GHOST:AS TL WAS 
IN THE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL 
BE: WORLD WITHOUT END. AMEN. 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT MAN. 


I 


Man: what is he? What am I? the Psalmist asked in 
classic words as he contrasted the immensity of the heavy- 
ens with his own frail self. ‘When I consider thy 
heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, 
which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou art 
mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest 
him ?” 

It is evident that we cannot think of man apart from 
God or God apart from man. Each is an aspect of the 
other. What can I say of myself? This seems a foolish 
question at first—there is so much that I seem to know 
of my own powers and plans and place in the scheme of 
things. But not far along in my explorations as I begin 
to dig in, this knowledge begins to become more and more 
shadowy. Long before the analysis is complete, I realize 
how little there is of which I can be absolutely sure, and 
the fading of the certitudes formerly taken for granted 
threatens to undermine the foundations completely upon 
which I have rested with such confidence. 

At my mother’s knee I was taught to look out upon a 
real world made according to a definite plan by a divine 
artificer. God gave me ears to hear, eyes to see and a 
tongue to speak. I was told that I was his child and 
that if I would be wise, good and obedient to his laws, I 
should have a place in his favor both in this world and in 
the next. ‘For ever and ever!’ How the phrase haunts 
me still. It was so freighted with tragic and awesome 
meaning. I hoped almost against hope, and prayed that 
I might escape the burning lake in the nether world into 
which all bad people are pushed after the manner de- 

34 


Wuat I Know Asout Man 35 


picted in Angelo’s Last Judgment. On the other hand 
my idea of God was not so alluring as to hold out the 
promise of much joy should I be so fortunate as to spend 
eternity in his presence. 

Then came increasing knowledge that made me begin 
to realize that life is not so simple as I had been led to 
believe. First the historian pushed the curtains of the 
past back far beyond the time at which I had been told 
that “heaven and earth rose out of chaos.” The geol- 
ogist informed me that this planet was ages in the making. 
The astronomer told of stars and distances that reveal 
the earth as a mere fleck of dust swinging on a leash in 
the void. The biologist broke the news that all the lower 
animals are my poor relations and that in the upward 
climb of man from his lowly origins many of their qual- 
ities have been retained, thus accounting for the ape and 
tiger in me. 

Another teacher, the psychologist, showed me how 
complex my personality is. The story runs like this: 
The mind is composed of a network of mental elements 
associated in various systems. Sometimes these work to- 
gether in harmony, but at other times they engage in 
serious conflicts. St. Paul referred to this in his con- 
fession, *“‘For the good that I would I do not; but the evil 
which I would not, that I do.” At times unruly mem- 
bers of the kingdom of the mind force unwise and dis- 
astrous decisions, because of the stubbornness and _ pas- 
sion with which they assert their wishes. When the 
good within me loses control, yielding sovereignty for 
the moment to some base impulse, I act in a way that 
brings me shame. This gives the pessimist ground for 
his assertions that man is vain, self-centered, unre- 
strained, driven by destructive passions. He stands ready, 
the pessimist continues, to expose himself to vile contagion 
for a momentary pleasure. Immediate desire wins with 
him over future good, and he is too wayward and foolish to 
be capable of avoiding self-destruction in war. 


36 Now I Know 


Thus the psychologist broke down my inherited idea 
that it is always simple and easy to choose the straight 
and narrow path. In my subconscious mind, far below 
the surface of my ordinary interests, he told me, a Mr. 
Hyde is lurking in the darkness, waiting always for a 
chance to overthrow the good man I would be. John 
Newton, the Puritan divine, knew the difficulties in- 
volved in righteous action. Seeing a drunkard reeling 
past he said, “There goes John Newton but for the grace 
of God.” 

Still another teacher was the sociologist, who also 
handed me a primer and made me spell out the lessons 
he assigned. He showed me that the environment in 
which we live is the soil in which the soul is planted. 
When the soil is bad, the crop is likely to be bad. Thus 
multitudes never have a chance. They are warped and 
deformed in body and soul by the flood of evil influences 
that roll over them in their formative years. Growing 
up in the street, vulgarity, vice and even crime form 
the air they breathe. They are hardly more to blame 
for their failure than a sickly plant struggling against 
weeds in an impoverished garden is to blame for its 
condition. 

Thus the simple world of childhood became bafflingly 
complex, and for a time in this vortex of opposing 
currents it seemed that all certainties were forever gone. 


IT 


In this confusion as I tried to inventory what was left, 
I found myself able to say, “I know that I exist. I think; 
I am a person because I am aware of myself as an integer 
and not a fraction of other men or of the world.” Whatever 
the truth may be about the distances in space and time 
connected with the making of the universe and the origin 
of man, one thing at least was certain, I was alive, a con- 
scious being, set in a world of wonderful interest with 
multitudes of men much like myself, whose minds seemed 


Wuat I Know Azsout Man 37 


to work in the same manner as mine, at least in dealing 
with material things. Though we might differ about ab- 
stract ideas such as the nature of justice or beauty, we 
agreed that 2+-2=4, or that a straight line is the shortest 
distance between two points, which confirmed my assur- 
ance of the reality of my existence in an ordered and not 
a topsy-turvy world. 


III 


Nature is a word often used. It has many meanings 
or aspects, but in brief it stands for the sum total of the 
forces that shape the universe. Winds and tides, sunlight 
and showers, grass, trees, flowers, the lion in the jungle, 
and the cattle on the hills are all works of nature. So is 
man. I was born and I shall die, along with the flower 
of the field or the bird of the air. I must keep in vital 
connection with the reservoir of energy in mother nature 
no less than the tree or the elephant. My kinship with 
the lving world about me is attested in a thousand ways. 

Though I am rooted in nature with these other works, 
nature rises higher in me than in them. There is a 
power within me which lifts me above them and gives 
me control over them at many points. Irresistible 
though they are when blindly combated, they can be 
wooed to change their course and do my bidding. I 
can harness tides and winds, though I can neither 
stop nor start them with my puny strength. I can 
turn a stream from its native course. I can analyze 
the materials of which my own body as a child of na- 
ture is built, and also describe those which enter into 
the making of the most distant of the stars. Daily 
I am compelling her to yield me new secrets. I have 
directed her creative energy into the formation of new 
plants and flowers and bred improved grain and cattle 
which supply my needs better than her own creations. 
There is none other of her creatures save man who thus 
can turn her power into channels of his own choosing. 


38 Now I Know 


Man is not flattering himself when he affirms that he is 
the “roof and crown of things.” 


IV 


That is not all. The best of the story has not yet been 
told. Whatever my relation to nature, I know that I am 
a child of God, and nature itself is but a manifestation of 
his power and purpose. I derive the strength to control 
my natural appetites and passions from him. In my rela- 
tions to my fellows I strive to be just and merciful and 
pure. Though I often fail grievously, I have a right to 
have my capacity judged by what I aim to be, especially 
when the achievements of chosen men show that my ideal 
is not impossible. Besides, the shame I feel when I do 
wrong proves the nobility of my origin. Whence this 
sense of justice, this love of truth, this desire for a merci- 
ful heart, except it came from God? There are those who 
affirm that these and other virtues are mere functions of 
a material nervous system, but I know that they are 
wrong because the lower can never explain the higher. 
The body never explains the soul. Only God explains 
man. Whatever of goodness, justice, reason, faith and 
love is in me came from him. The fact that I have these 
qualities even in embryo is a proof of my divine origin. 


Vv 


Nor is my experience of myself yet exhausted. “I am a 
part of all that I have met.” Into the fabric of my being 
all the achievements of which I have ever heard are woven, 
and all the impressions made upon my mind by the won- 
ders of the world. My spirit thrills to hear of wrongs 
righted, of valorous and chivalrous deeds in defense of the 
weak, of pioneers in thought and action who braved the 
terrors of unknown worlds because of their love of truth. 
Isaiah, Paul, Bruno, Huss, Knox, Cromwell, Lincoln, 
Emerson, Livingstone, daring souls like these form the 
hierarchy that holds my fealty and in sitting at their feet 


Wuat I Know Azsout Man 39 


I take on in some degree the color and texture of their 
souls. I hold communion with the great thinkers of the 
ages. Why should I be lonely when I can listen to 
Socrates discussing with the gifted youth of Athens the 
deeper problems of destiny, or follow Copernicus in his 
exploration of the heavens, or Cook and Magellan through 
hitherto undiscovered seas? If Dante, Shakespeare, Mil- 
ton and Goethe are my friends, why should I be distressed 
if my neighbor seems to slight me? Daily I hold converse 
with them, and as I hear their messages I become in part 
a vehicle of their wisdom. In me they live again. 


VI 


Sometimes I chafe because of the limitations imposed 
upon me by my body; it moves so slowly and anchors me 
to such a narrow radius. But a little reflection shows 
that this restriction is more apparent than real. 

Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage: 

Minds innocent and quiet take 
That for an hermitage; 

If I have freedom in my love, 
And in my soul am free, 

Angels alone that soar above 
Enjoy such liberty.’ 

My soul recognizes no barriers of time or space. I ride 
on the wings of the morning in my thought and play on the 
crest of the waves in tropic oceans or with Peary or Stef- 
annson walk the shifting ice floes that carpet arctic seas. 
Neither cold nor heat affect my journeyings as I move 
through space, piercing and passing beyond the Milky 
Way on swifter chariot than ever Phoebus drove, or leap- 
ing from Betelgeuse to Lyra and back to the Pleiades. 
The universe is my home, the world my front yard. One 
moment I am on the loftiest summit of the Himalayas, 
and the next on the wide bosom of the Amazon, or riding 
on an eagle’s back. My body alone is tied to a point in 


* Richard Lovelace. 


40 Now I Know 


space. My mind moves at will anywhere within the orbit 
of the finite. 
The body is not bounded by its skin; 
Its effluence, like a gentle cloud of scent, 
Is wide into the air diffused, and, blent 
With elements unseen, its way doth win 
To ether frontiers, where take origin 
Far subtler systems, nobler regions meant 
To be the area and the instrument 
Of operations ever to begin 
Anew and never end. Thus every man 
Wears as his robe the garment of the sky— 
So close his union with the cosmic plan, 
So perfectly he pierces low and high— 
Reaching as far in space as creature can, 
And co-extending with immensity.’ 


Again the explanation is my kinship with God. Be 
cause he lives in me I live in him, and follow him as a 
child as he does his work and tends his flowers in the 
mystic gardens of infinity. Therein les the incomparable 
dignity of my manhood. 


Vil 


“He knew what was in man.” So the sacred record 
tells us of him whose communion with God and identity 
of purpose with him were far more intimate than anyone 
else has ever known. So complete was this communion 
and identity that he could say, “I and the Father are one.” 
Not least of his claims to spiritual sovereignty was this rec- 
ognition of the worth of man. The tendency to underrate 
his own dignity and worth has always been one of man’s 
gravest faults. Doubtless many of his sins are due to 
this tendency to self-disparagement, for where little is ex- 
pected little is evoked. ‘Only a man” is a much used 
derogatory phrase, and one that we should always avoid, 
as it tends to deny our divine origin and makes light of 
our priceless inheritance. We become oblivious to the 
miracle of human life because we are only superficially 


* John Charles Earle. (By permission of Messrs. Burns, Oates & 
Washbourne, Ltd.) 


Wuat I Know Azsoutr Man 41 


familiar with ourselves and other men. That the air we 
breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat are trans- 
muted into the vision of Isaiah, the dynamic thought of St. 
Paul, the motive of Francis Xavier, the imagination of 
Shakespeare, the observation of Darwin, the melody of 
Beethoven, the invention of Edison is a miracle second 
only to the universe itself. I know that the personality 
of man is of infinite value because of these divine qual- 
ities with which God has so generously endowed him. He 
is the work of God’s own hands, the climax of ages of 
divine endeavor, and most precious in his Maker’s sight. 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT SIN 


it 


The very word sin seemed to bite and burn, blister and 
inflame and leave a festering wound, in the impression- 
able years, when I was beginning to learn the meaning 
of life. All around me sin had left its scars upon the so- 
cial fabric. The drunkard, the leper and the abandoned 
woman were its victims; the prison and the mad-house its 
monuments. I learned early not to make the mistake of 
looking for sin only outside of myself. I had been told 
that my own nature was sinful and prone to evil, and I 
was not old in years before the truth of this statement was 
confirmed in my own experience. I found that sometimes 
when I would do good, evil was present with me, and 
that the virtue of any moment might vanish suddenly and 
give place to sinful passions. Philosophers may try to 
explain sin away, but it still remains, and functions in the 
lust, selfishness, cruelty, the vice, misery and crime 
which blight the careers of multitudes in every generation, 
and poison the life stream of the race. 


II 


Yet we are told that men are not worrying any more 
about their sins. Then so much the worse for men! In 
its most restricted meaning, sin is a missing of the mark, 
a failure to realize my best. When the day arrives that 
I am content to be less than God intended me to be, my 
state will be bad indeed. Doubtless myriads of men 
are in that condition. They have no over-weening desire 
for other than material things. Their minds are car- 
nal and their prayers rarely embrace anything above the 

42 


Wuat I Know Asovur Sixn_. 43 


interests and values of this world. Although in respect 
to many things worry and discontent are bad, if an ep- 
idemic of spiritual anguish over their sins should sweep 
over the world, until men universally cried for salvation, 
it would accomplish a world of good. Surely we all 
have sins that we have every reason to worry over. We 
have not made such a success of living together in this 
world that we have much ground for satisfaction. We 
still settle our international disputes by the sword, and 
kill and maim our fellow men by the millions. We 
sacrifice children in multitudes to the god of cheap pro- 
duction, the modern Moloch, while in pharisaical self- 
righteousness we denounce the ancient heathen for the 
sacrifices they made to their deities with a purer motive 
than commercial profit. 

We shut in prisons which are cesspools of vice and 
crime thousands of boys whom we have neglected in the 
streets. Schooled and hardened as criminals, we turn them 
out to prey upon society without making any attempt to 
eure them of their evil intentions. When we catch them 
in the crimes we expect them to commit, we sentence them 
again to prison for years. 

We are ruled by the mob spirit. We are afraid to 
speak out lest we hurt our own interests. We rob the 
government. We honor men who have never rendered 
honest service to the community. We spend immeasur- 
ably more on our selfish pleasures than in furthering 
the religion in which we profess to believe. Compare 
the numbers employed in raising, manufacturing and 
selling tobacco with the number of missionaries we send 
to foreign fields. Our interest in advancing the King- 
dom of God is mild in comparison with our interest in 
increasing our own worldly position. If this seems too 
strong language, test it by trying to focus public atten- 
tion upon some glaring injustice suffered by the Negro 
or any other weak group in society. These are our social 


44. Now I Know 


sins. They are reflected in the weaknesses we all share, 
and even in the best of men are evident to him who has 
the insight to analyze character. Because I am a man I 
know that I am a sinner. 


Tit 


But what is sin? So far as definitions go it would 
be a hard task to improve upon the statement of the 
Shorter Catechism—‘“Sin is any want of conformity 
unto or transgression of the law of God.” The trouble 
is, however, that definitions often raise more ghosts than 
they lay. In this case our definition simply pushes us 
back into another zone of darkness, for we are forced to 
ask—“‘What is the law of God?” ‘That is easy,” some 
one may answer. “The Ten Commandments constitute 
the law.” But even though we agree that all duty is 
covered in principle in the Decalogue, we are still faced 
with the necessity of interpreting and applying the com- 
mandments to any and every set of circumstances in 
which we find ourselves. ‘Remember the Sabbath Day 
to keep it holy.” Profound differences of opinion have 
arisen between men equally loyal to this law. Some 
farmers allow their crops to be spoiled by rain rather 
than take them in on the Sabbath, while others have no 
such scruples. 

In short, the remainder of the Old and all the New 
Testament may be regarded as explanations, expositions 
and restatements in positive terms of the whole duty of 
man which is implicit in the Commandments. But this 
does not make the law of God easy to determine. The 
path of duty is never simple except in the more ele- 
mental relations of hfe. In Protestant theology the 
Bible is the final seat of authority. But this clearly 
defined principle has not saved us from friction and end- 
less divisions in its applications. Our spiritual fore- 
fathers did not see that the line of truth in the Bible is 


Wuat I Know Asovurt Srn 45 


not self-evident. Every sect is a monument to their 
error. Men get out of the Bible what they bring to it, 
especially when their primary motive is to search for 
support for their doctrines rather than to learn the truth. 
Hence the definition of sin I have cited is not specific 
enough. We need to know more about the law of God 
before we can get much profit out of the position that 
sin is a violation of that law. 


IV 


There are other difficulties also in this definition. 
Transgression of any law may be either unconscious or 
deliberate. It may arise from ignorance or from defi- 
ance. Before we can put a just assessment upon an 
offence against the laws of man or God we must know 
the motive. The Shorter Catechism does not take this 
fact into account. Most of the traditional thinking of 
the church upon the nature and consequences of sin does 
not take it into account. Men have found this out and 
one reason for a less acute sense of sin in our time is due 
to this failure of the church. Intuitively men recognize 
that no just judge will condemn them as severely for sins 
of ignorance as for open rebellion against the law. The 
assertion that they are equally deserving of punishment, 
tends to break down the sense of guilt they would other- 
wise feel. To brand all men as rebels in the heavenly 
commonwealth who are equally reprobate before God 
may be good technical theology, but it is not true in 
spirit. It is often said that ignorance of the law is no 
excuse, but in everyday practice and in ordinary com- 
mon sense ignorance is regarded as a mitigating circum- 
stance by any wise court. The driver of a motor car 
who disregards a traffic signal is subject to arrest, but if 
he can show the officer in charge that he misread the 
signal, mercy will usually be shown to him. If, how- 
ever, he wantonly defies the law, he will be dealt with 


46 Now I Know 


more severely. Such factors are taken into account by 
every fair tribunal. 


Vv 


A vast body of new knowledge has thrown much light 
upon the complicated nature of sin in recent times, ren- 
dering our task of defining it more difficult than it 
seemed to our forbears. Most of our current theological 
definitions are not of our making but were framed by 
men who lived in a static world. They did not take the 
movement of life into account. ‘New occasions teach 
new duties.” For ages, chattel slavery was not regarded 
as a sin, but there came a day when men saw that it was 
a grievous offence against God because it was a wanton 
violation of human personality. The same is true of 
child labor, and of the liquor traffic. Always under the 
discipline of response to such truth as he has, the con- 
science of man tends to become more sensitive. 

While we talk of the good old days, every true reader 
of history knows that bad as our own times are, and 
great though our sins, things are better now than ever 
before. If anyone doubts this statement let him make a 
comparative study of public and private morality a hun- 
dred or two hundred years ago in England or America 
with that of our own day. It is safe to say that his 
verdict will be strongly in our favor. Our standards are 
undoubtedly higher. This shows conclusively that sin is a 
relative term. It differs in meaning from age to age. With 
each increment of growth in righteousness, acts become 
branded as sinful that were previously accepted as in har- 
mony with the prevailing moral standards. A striking 
illustration of this principle is seen in the emancipation 
of woman. She is fast winning complete recognition as 
a person rather than property, which was her status al- 
most up to this generation, although the older idea still 
survives in some degree in law, the church and popular 
opinion. 


Wuat I Know Azsourt Sin 47 


Vi 


Again, as the part played by environment in the shap- 
ing of character is becoming more and more clearly 
recognized, its bearing upon our problem is seen to be 
revolutionary. Here are two boys growing up in a mod- 
ern city. The one has a good home and his parents take 
every care to guard him against ills of body and of mind, 
and to nurture his best powers. He has the advantage 
of the most skilled physicians and teachers. The other 
boy is the son of a widow in an alley. While his mother 
goes out to clean offices, he has to be left to the cruel 
nurture of the streets. From his tenderest years, the 
game of outwitting the policeman goes on before his 
eyes. Vice and crime form a definite part of the air he 
breathes in the neighborhood of his home. If the mother 
loses in the contest between the environment and herself 
for her boy, it is small wonder. The natural thing is 
for the one boy to become a respectable citizen and the 
other an enemy of society. When good seed is planted 
in poor soil, a poor crop is certain. This is always true 
of wheat and sometimes true of men. 

Environment, therefore, must be given a large place 
in making a diagnosis of sin from now on and in view 
of the many hidden factors it introduces we shall, if we 
are wise, be slow in passing judgment upon our fellows. 
These considerations may have been in the mind of 
Jesus when he said, “Judge not that ye be not judged,” 
and “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast 
a stone at her.” The French proverb that ‘“‘to know all 
is to pardon all,” may exaggerate, but who knows enough 
about the determining influences in which any life has 
grown, to justify him in condemning another? What- 
ever action we have to take for the protection of society 
against criminals, we should never condemn them in bit- 
terness and self-righteousness, remembering that with 
what measure we mete, it will be measured to us again. 


4.8 Now I Know 


Vil 


One further difficulty remains in dealing with sin in 
the light of modern knowledge. Personality is not so 
simple as it seemed to the makers of our inherited 
theology. Our consciousness to which we are attending 
at any moment is but a small fraction of what we are. 
We are the sum of all our yesterdays and of all the yes- 
terdays of the race. In our animal inheritance we are 
heirs of a past tremendous in its content and meaning. 
Often that inheritance tips the scale in determining our 
actions. The life history of the individual repeats the 
life history of the race. This is true physically, and it 
is also true mentally and spiritually. That most people 
do not realize it and do not take it into account is due 
to the fact that the condensation of time involved is so 
ereat that it is difficult to believe. It takes practice to 
recognize in the growing child and youth the stages 
through which man has come in his long climb toward 
God. 

This racial inheritance, with all the blind passion and 
latent memory which it carries along with it, is a part 
of personality, the foundation upon which it rests. Nor- 
mally it is kept under fair control, but in times of stress, 
such as delirium, hypnosis or insanity, the animal in the 
soul breaks his leash. We are pushed aside and it seizes 
the reins of personality. Results are similar to those in 
the ancient myth, when Phoebus abdicated his right to 
drive the chariot of the sun and Phaeton trying to take 
his father’s place brought disaster to himself, his parent 
and the world. 

Below the threshold of our waking life or conscious- 
ness lie stored all the experiences through which we have 
ever passed. No occurrence was too trivial for registra- 
tion there. If it be true that the very hairs of our head 
are numbered, it is more true that every hope, fear, 
thought, dream and wish that ever flashed through our 
minds is cared for in that mysterious abyss we call the 


Wuat I Know Asovurtr Srtn 49 


sub-conscious self. Every influence we have ever felt is 
pigeon-holed there, as is also every impression we have 
ever received. Although most of these experiences are 
beyond all ordinary recall, that does not mean they are 
unimportant. On the contrary, they exercise determin- 
ing influences upon our conscious thinking and action. 
No man can be understood until we know the degree in 
which he can keep his sub-consciousness in hand. When 
we are surprised by an unusual and apparently contradic- 
tory act, such as an outburst of sensuality or temper, by 
a person whom we have held in high esteem, in our 
wonder how he could have so belied his nature, we say 
that it is unlike him to act in such a way. But in truth 
such action rang the curtain up on a hidden aspect of his 
real self. Multitudes of people who exhibit various 
forms of weakness we label sinful, act under compulsions 
due to wounds given their psychic life in childhood 
which they cannot control. They probably have no 
conscious memory of these injurious experiences, but 
these failures to adjust themselves to the moral and 
social order are due to the fact that they are constantly 
fighting in the dark “not against flesh and blood.” Much 
insight into the workings of the mind has only recently 
come to light, so that it is no indication of intellectual 
conceit to say that we have a wider and higher outlook 
than that of the men who wrote the great confessions of 
the church. They also show how futile and unjust it is 
to try to standardize sins and sinners. It would not be 
more foolish to blame a man suffering from typhoid fever 
for being unable to do his share in digging a trench, than 
it is to censure many an erring soul mercilessly for his 
apparent violations of the moral law. His sin may rep- 
resent a defeat after he has put up a heroic battle against 
great odds rather than a wanton disobedience and its 
right treatment may require all the sympathy, patience 
and wisdom the most expert physician of the soul can 
bring to bear upon the case. 


50 Now I Know 


VIII 


When these considerations are taken into account it 
is evident that men can no longer give way to the 
abandonment of remorse and guilt which caused them so 
much suffering in bygone generations. If I am in part 
what my inheritance has made me, since I had no con- 
trol over that inheritance, common sense will prevent 
me from feeling as discredited as though the entire re- 
sponsibility for my condition rested upon myself. If 
in addition to my inheritance my environment in my 
early formative years indelibly marked my character 
and subjected it to an evil strain or warp, my feeling of 
guilt will not be so overwhelmingly crushing. This is 
the situation in which we stand to-day. One cannot 
imagine a modern congregation being moved with such 
fear and repentance as the hearers of Jonathan Edwards 
at Northampton when he preached his famous sermon— 
“Sinners in the hands of an angry God.” Men know 
that they are sinners, but they do not believe that their 
deplorable condition is entirely due to themselves. In- 
stinctively they are disposed to plead the doctrine of con- 
tributory negligence against the vast invisible tide of 
destiny for making them what they are. It is safe to 
affirm that the old intolerable sense of guilt born of the 
belief that the sinner had committed a series of offences 
against God, too terrible for forgiveness, will never 
again become characteristic of the Christian outlook. 
Psychology has undermined our trust in that version of 
sin and guilt and it can never be restored. 


IX 


While I have pointed out the danger of dogmatic judg- 
ment upon sin and sinners, and have shown why the 
sense of sin is less intolerable today than formerly, this 
does not alter the primary fact that sin is the great 
scourge of the race. It never sleeps at its work of de- 
feating man’s fairest promise. We have explained how 


Wuat I Know Asovur Sin 51 


majestic man is by nature, how sublime his powers, 
sharing, as he does, the very nature of God whose 
thoughts he thinks again. 

The Peak is high and flush’d 

At his highest with sunrise fire; 


The Peak is high, and the stars are high, 
And the thought of a man is higher. 


But in man’s eminence lies his gravest danger. The 
animals do not sin. The possibility and dangers of sin 
are the conditions of our spiritual liberty. An Eden 
from which there could have been no possibility of ex- 
pulsion, would have been an Eden in which no credit 
was due its untempted and untemptable inhabitants. 
Without the possibility of vice there can be no virtue. 
Sin is a coefficient of responsibility. 

Every power of man can be used for good or ill. The 
motor car is a chariot of mercy as the physician uses it 
to hasten on his errand of relief to the fevered bedside; 
it is a vehicle of crime to the bandit who uses it to 
escape. What is sin? It is too complex for definition, 
but we can say that selfishness is always at the bottom of 
it. If I am using my talents to make use of others for my 
own profit and pleasure alone, I am transgressing the 
most fundamental of all God’s laws. The more faith- 
fully we strive to be unselfish, the less of sin is there 
in us. And while we can never escape entirely the errors 
due to ignorance and those deflections from the path of 
righteousness due to obscure and unknown causes, if we 
avail ourselves of the help offered to us, we can free our- 
selves in surprising measure from the deadly clutch of 
sin. But this is to anticipate. 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT THE INCARNATION 


I 


Among the many experiences of our younger days was 
our introduction to the mysteries of grammar. Our 
teacher in that subject used to set us a difficult task, in 
requiring us to separate nouns into their two classes. We 
were told that some nouns were concrete and some were 
abstract, and we had to determine to which group any 
given word belonged. At the outset it was baffling. Even 
before we had the key, however, we often guessed the 
answer without knowing the reason. But there came a 
day, by that subtle alchemy which takes place in the brain, 
as it ponders upon any problem within its reach, when 
a flood of light illuminated the problem which had 
hitherto been so confusing. In our first joy from this 
revelation, and the sense of wisdom it gave us, we felt 
that the teacher might exhaust the dictionary without 
causing us to stumble or hesitate in deciding in which 
list any given word should be placed. 

For we had learned that a concrete noun is a symbol 
for something that can be handled, measured and defined. 
Here is a box. It is real, for I can see it, feel it, name 
its color, and by means of a rule, give its exact dimen- 
sions. I can also tell of what material it is made, whether 
the workmanship is good or bad and I can give some idea 
of the use for which it has been manufactured. For prac- 
tical purposes this is all that is necessary for me to know, 
though there are many things about the box which are 
still beyond the utmost fringes of our knowledge. I do 
not know the number of electrons and ions its material 
contains, nor where the tree grew out of which it has 
been formed, nor the men who cut it down, nor those who 

52 


Wuat I Know Axsovut tHe INCARNATION 53 


transported it to the river upon which it was floated to 
the mill. Nor do I know the men who sawed it into 
boards or loaded it upon the train that carried it to the 
city where it became a box, nor can I compute the number 
of hands that took part in its making before it was com- 
pleted. Yet I can safely affirm that my experience with 
boxes, in spite of such limitations, justifies me in assum- 
ing that I have a working knowledge of them. 

In the case of abstract nouns, the solution was not so 
easy. Here there is nothing that can be touched or 
measured, as they do not represent things. ‘They are 
symbols of qualities and they always subject the mind to 
a greater strain in the handling than concrete realities. 
Truth, justice, love, virtue, vice, wisdom, light and dark- 
ness are abstractions. It is a very difficult task to define 
them or describe them. In fact it is almost impossible 
to do so satisfactorily. If we make the attempt we soon 
find ourselves floundering in a quagmire of confusion. 
The moment we finish building a verbal fence around 
such an idea as truth, we learn that we have left a hole 
through which the essence of our thought can leak away. 
Even the philosophers fail in the definitions which they 
make, or at any rate, they do not satisfy us for we feel 
lost as we try to follow the trails of their reasoning. 

Here common sense comes to our aid, and establishes 
a working principle for our minds to use. I do not know 
what truth is any more than Pilate, whose historic ques- 
tion was anything but foolish. But I recognize some 
things as true or truths. That two and two are four is 
not subject to debate, nor is the affirmation that man is 
mortal, so far as his life on this planet is concerned. 
Both of these propositions are confirmed in my experi- 
ence, and I am convinced that they harmonize and agree 
with reality. 

By the same method I learn the meaning of love. I 
cannot define it but I can point to a little child rushing 
in her grief to her mother, and throwing her arms about 


54 Now I Know 


her neck. That is an instance of love, as is also the 
reciprocal attitude of the mother to the child. Beauty 
is another quality that defies subjugation by words how- 
ever neatly woven. If I hold a rose in my hand, how- 
ever, and say—‘“this is beautiful,” a child will under- 
stand my meaning and also follow my thought when I 
say “beautiful” and point to the clouds around the set- 
ting sun breaking the white light that has crossed the 
immeasurable distances of space into the splendors of the 
rainbow. 


II 


Different though concrete and abstract symbols may be, 
there is one underlying similarity between them. They 
are alike in that they are both after-consequences of an 
idea. Before the box of which I have spoken came into 
being, it existed as a picture in some mind or group of 
minds. The same is true of the ship upon the sea, the 
motor car upon the street, a book or house or anything 
that man has made. If this is true of those objects which 
owe their shape to man’s creative touch, surely it im- 
poses no strain upon our faith to infer that this universe 
of which our earth is but an infinitesimal particle, is an 
after consequence of an idea in which the processional of 
the stars took their proper place, and all the order, beauty 
and precision of our own and other worlds, as revealed by 
microscope and telescope and other aids to knowledge. 
To whose mind did the idea belong that took concrete 
form on so infinite a scale? There is only one answer. 
The universe has its origin in the mind of God. The 
system of nature, animate and inanimate, is the projec- 
tion of his mind. Man also is an expression of God’s 
thought upon the loftiest plane we know. 

In the light of the facts within our reach, it is impos- 
sible to tell how long man has lived upon the earth. 
Scholars vary widely in their opinions, from 25,000 to 
500,000 years. But we know that man has never been 


Wuat I Know Axsovut tue INCARNATION 55 


satisfied with himself. There is no difference of opinion 
on that point. All through the countless generations, he 
has been seeking a better city. And while at his best, he 
has lived nobly and given expression to sublime ideals, it 
is evident that the creative purpose never rested content 
with his highest achievement. The noblest faith and 
aspiration of psalmist and prophet still remain an ideal 
rather than an achievement. To do justice, to love mercy 
and walk humbly with God as a motive of life cannot be 
surpassed in theory, but it does not prove its vitality until 
it has found or made “a local habitation and a name” for 
itself in terms of character and conduct. Men living on 
a low ethical and spiritual level would agree that right- 
eousness, mercy, truth and love are desirable qualities and 
should be practiced. Disagreement arises when it be- 
comes necessary to gain their consent to put them in 
action. 


nw S 


Such considerations afford us the key to an under- 
standing of the incarnation. To realize the divine pur- 
pose for man, it was not enough that he should know 
theoretically the necessity of loving his fellow men, of 
being kind, generous and good in all his dealings with 
them; of having faith, purity of heart, moral courage, 
self-control and every other virtue. Many have even 
falsely believed themselves in possession of these qual- 
ities for their lives gave no indication of superior worth 
to their neighbors. So it was that in the fulness of time, 
a child was born who was to be known under the double 
title, Son of Man and Son of God. He was to incor- 
porate in his person and character all those divine qualities 
which hitherto had either been floating about in ordinary 
men’s minds as abstractions, or ideals, or had only found 
meagre expression in lawgivers and prophets. 

There has been no valid occasion since for dispute as 
to what God’s purpuse is for man. It is definitely and 


56 Now I Know 


finally set forth in Christ. “In him was life, and the 
life was the light of men.” The divine ideal is a social 
order in which every member of the commonwealth will 
be a vehicle of Christ’s spirit and a reincarnation of his 
purpose: “till we all come in the unity of the faith, and 
of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, 
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” 
If we would learn what love for mankind is, there is no 
excuse left for idle arguments or disputes. Christ is love 
for mankind. All his teaching is an exposition of him- 
self, a commentary upon himself. If we wish to learn 
with certainty our persona: or national duty toward other 
races and nations in distress or in darkness, the parable 
of the Good Samaritan indicates the one door of action 
open to us. If we would learn the right attitude to adopt 
toward the man or woman who has lost all self-respect 
we have the key to the answer in the words, “Neither do 
I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” If some poor 
broken soul wandering in the far country of passion and 
disillusionment comes to us asking the way of life, we 
have only to refer him to the parable of the Prodigal Son. 
How simple and definite all this is! We do not need to 
confuse the questioner by referring him to any creed or 
formula. All that is required of him is the will to arise 
and go to his Father, who will meet him while still he is 
a great way off, and give him a royal welcome. Thus, 
every honest question concerning faith and conduct finds 
a clear answer in Christ. 


IV 


The preceding argument leads up to the explanation of 
one of the most pregnant of recorded utterances. “The 
Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we be- 
held his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the 
Father), full of grace and truth.” Upon the principle 
enunciated in those words, the entire Christian fabric 
rests. The dynamic of the gospel lies in the twofold 


Wuat L Know Axsovut THE INCARNATION 57 


presentation of that Word, first and most important in 
terms of personal embodiment, and secondly in words that 
are spirit and life. It is futile for critics of Christianity 
to point out that in the Old Testament and other litera- 
tures, a parallel for every statement of Jesus may be 
found, and that there is nothing distinctively original in 
his teaching. For there is a world of difference in carry- 
ing power between the two. The essential distinction be- 
tween him and other teachers lies not in the content of 
their respective messages. He not only spoke the truth; 
he was the Truth. I can preach and tell men to be pure, 
honest, bold and merciful and just, but in my most 
egotistical moods, I dare not claim that they would be safe 
in following my example. Christ is the Son of God with 
power because he is the perfect embodiment of the truth 
of God which he proclaims. 

The essence of that truth is love. Jesus came into 
a world full of suspicion, fear, injustice and hatred, and 
he offered a cure for every one of its ills. That cure 
was the recognition in theory and practice of brotherhood, 
since all men are the children of the same Father. Where 
there is such recognition, love banishes evil affections from 
the heart and takes their place. Huis gospel of love ex- 
tended even to one’s enemies. ‘He came unto his own, 
and his own received him not,” but this rejection did not 
affect his love for he knew that they did not understand 
what they were losing. If they had understood what he 
came to impart, they would have hailed his coming with 
joy. 

No matter how deep his reason for disappointment or 
provocation, in his relations with men, Jesus was always 
the embodiment of love. Never did he speak severely 
or censoriously of a sinner, or of sins save one offence. 
Nor was this a sin of the flesh as we should naturally 
expect. On the contrary, he was popularly looked upon 
as a friend of publicans and other sinners of the more 
flagrant type. ‘The people he castigated without mercy 


58 Now I Know 


were those who did not believe they were sinners at all, 
the orthodox respectable leaders of Jewish society. To 
find a parallel in our own day, this was as if a modern 
pastor were to censure the officers and leading supporters 
of his own church. What drew these stern rebukes of 
Jesus upon them was not the natural sinfulness they 
shared with all others, but the effrontery of blind men 
insisting upon acting as the religious pilots of their na- 
tion. They were so conspiciously deficient in humility 
and mercy that they felt qualified to sit in judgment on 
every body else. It did not so much as occur to them 
that this could be wrong. If we knew all that went on 
in Palestine in that time, we should realize better the 
sensation caused by the first telling of the parable of the 
Good Samaritan or that of the Pharisee and the Pub- 
lican. ‘The only sin that love cannot forgive is the blind 
lack of insight that goes with lack of love, and Jesus 
poured out his wrath only upon those who exhibited this 
fatal defect of character. 


Vv 


Thus the love of God for his children made in his 
image reaches its zenith in the incarnation of that love 
in Christ. ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave 
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Love is 
the matrix in which all the other virtues originate. 
Love is the mainspring of faith. Because he loved so 
deeply, Jesus gained the insight called “faith” into the 
goodness of God and the salvability of the human soul, 
no matter how unpromising its present condition. Thus 
Jesus looks upon the prodigal in the far country, who 
feels that he has lost all claim upon the forgiveness of 
his father, or the recognition of his friends, with different 
eyes. His insight of love enables him to believe that such 
a man can be redeemed. Establish contact between him 
and this insight of love and, needless to say, this new 


Wuat I Know Asovut tur IncARNATION 59 


insight exerts a tremendous leverage upon the submerged 
goodness of the sinner, which tends to lift him out of 
his evil state. 

The “creed of creeds” is the ministry of Jesus when 
he was upon the earth. This is the only creed to which 
we must subscribe if we would enter into the kingdom of 
God. The form of our subscription is important. To 
be valid it must not consist of saying, “I believe,” but 
of signing a life-long contract to undertake by his grace 
to be in our due degree what he was in order that what we 
say and do may be a help and not a hindrance to the best 
welfare of others. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto 
the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” 


vi 


However, we have not yet traced the incarnation 
to its logical conclusion. The physical body of Jesus 
was only the temporary dwelling place of his eternal 
spirit. He has not been with his disciples, in fleshly 
form, since his earthly ministry ended. But this does not 
mean that the functions of the incarnation were confined 
in time to the days he spent upon the earth. If that 
were true, it would have only a theoretical value for 
us. The incarnation is not an isolated event in history, 
but a ceaseless process of ever widening inflence. In so 
far as the spirit and temper of the incarnation are in any 
one of us, to that extent we, too, are the vehicles of God’s 
love. This is the true interpretation of the great parable 
in which he reveals his relationship to us: ‘‘I am the 
vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in me, and I 
in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.” There is 
an organic connection between Christ and his friends. 
The life that is in him flows into them imparting to 
them increased health and power and returns from them 
to him not only unexhausted but in larger measure than 
it came. As the branches share the nature and the life 
of the vine, so the humblest Christian shares the char- 


60 Now I Know 


acter of Christ, and bears fruits in deeds of mercy and of 
love like those which he wrought under Syrian skies when 
he made the blind to see, the lame to walk and the dull 
to understand. 

“The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and 
we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of 
the Father,) full of grace and truth.” 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT THE ATONEMENT. 
I 


The Atonement is one of the central doctrines of his- 
toric Christianity. At certain periods, in fact, it has been 
considered by common consent the cardinal doctrine. Yet 
the majority of theologians and religious leaders find an 
increasing difficulty today in stating this doctrine in terms 
acceptable to the modern mind. Many preachers admit 
frankly that they find no place in which it fits into their 
thought, and therefore avoid it altogether. 

Now nothing is to be gained by speaking scornfully of 
the mental attitude of our times. That neither modifies 
it nor accounts for it. Every age has its thought forms 
which arise and reign we know not exactly how or why 
but they are as much a determining part of our environ- 
ment as the air we breathe. Our theological doctrines 
must be restated in accordance with these changes or they 
will be left behind as certainly as the powdered wigs of 
early Victorian days. 

While the word “atonement”’ is not used in the revised 
version of the New Testament, the idea which underlies it 
finds frequent expression both in the gospels and the 
epistles. There is, however, no single or uniform theory 
of the atoning work of Christ in the New Testament. The 
objective of atonement is to throw a bridge of reconcili- 
ation across the gulf created by a wrong or injury. 
It has been commonly thought that doing or suffering 
something which is accepted as an equivalent is the only 
method of reaching this objective. In historic Christian 
thought, the atonement meant the satisfaction made by 
Christ for the wrongs done to God by the sins of man- 
kind. The form which that satisfaction took has been 
explained in a variety of different ways through the his- 

61 


62 Now I Know 


tory of the church. It would be a difficult task to state 
in terms that could be understood by the average church 
member the various theories of the atonement which 
have been held at different times or have striven for 
the mastery at the same time. Men have debated in- 
terminably over these conflicting theories and on several 
occasions the church has been divided by them. 

Some of these explanations have become obviously 
grotesque today. For ten centuries the prevailing theory 
of the atonement was that the death of Christ was the 
price paid to the Devil for the release of mankind, since 
by the sin of Adam and Eve, all their descendants be- 
came his property. Later the explanation given was 
that since man’s disobedience constituted an offense 
against the infinite God and so required an infinite com- 
pensation to satisfy his injury, sacrifice of the infinite 
Christ appeased his anger. These different theories 
go by various names, substitutionary, satisfaction, penal, 
governmental, moral influence and their several varia- 
tions and subdivisions. The mind of today has diffi- 
culty in grasping the distinctions which differentiate 
them because we have left behind the background of experi- 
ence out of which they grew. Beneath them all, how- 
ever, lies the recognition of sin as universal and the idea 
that the sinner himself is unable to make reparation for 
his offense and guilt. According to all these explana- 
tions, the work of Christ was to atone for man’s sin 
and thus to reconcile him to God. 


II 


The apostle Paul has a luminous phrase in his first 
letter to the Corinthians which may well serve to relate 
the underlying truth in Christ’s atoning work to our 
immediate experience. For while, as we have seen, the 
explanation of a doctrine changes with our changing 
experiences, its essential truth is unchanging. Thus 
Paul’s statement to the Corinthians that they had been 


Wuat I Know Azsovut tHE ATONEMENT 63 


“bought with a price,” is as true of us as it was of them. 
But while this is so, it is evident that the full signifi- 
cance of the idea he was aiming to convey was much 
easier for them to grasp than it is for us. It required 
few or no explanations or amplifications for them, be- 
cause they were familiar with the practice of emanci- 
pation. Slavery was an established institution in the 
ancient world. Many of the first members of the 
church were slaves who had been captured in war or 
otherwise condemned to bondage. Naturally they dreamed 
of liberation, which was rarely accomplished in any other 
way than by purchase, though sometimes a favored slave 
was manumitted by his owner. 

The Corinthians understood Paul perfectly when, to 
describe their status as Christians, he told them that they 
had been bought with a price. They had been the bond 
servants of sin, as surely as any slave was the puppet 
of his master’s will. From this bondage Christ had 
freed them, so that now whether outwardly they were 
bond or free, in spirit they were the emancipated chil- 
dren of God. The law of sin and death no longer 
bound them. Their souls were liberated from the pas- 
sions and the discouragements which hitherto had worked 
their undoing. In that ancient world the slave and the 
poor had few rights. This reacted upon them disastrously 
and broke down their self-respect. ‘They had no proof 
of their native worth, until they heard the gospel mes- 
sage with its assurance that before God, they were the 
equals of their masters, and might even be their superi- 
ors. It is difficult to realize the tremendous meaning of 
this revelation. Men who had hitherto lived in a con- 
stant state of depression were seized with a sense of 
their immortal worth, and in accordance with a psychol- 
ogical law which is now well known, rose to the dignity 
of the new part they were to play. To Christ they owed 
their liberation, and to him their gratitude went out in 


64. Now I Know 


spontaneous and zealous efforts to share their freedom 
with others. 

We need not concern ourselves overmuch as to the 
exact method by which this transformation was achieved. 
The plain fact is the all important thing and the certainty 
that it was due to the work of Christ, both in his life 
and death. For it is too narrow an idea of his sacrificing 
love to restrict it to the cross. We have a brief glimpse 
of what he renounced in the story of the temptation. All 
that this world has to give was his for the taking, position, 
wealth, power and fame. He knew that inherent in him 
was the strength to win any earthly prize upon which 
he set his heart. But he repudiated every suggestion 
that he should devote himself to any personal or mate- 
rial end, and went out as the herald of the gospel that 
love is insight and insight is emancipation. Instead of 
wealth he chose poverty; instead of honor, reprobation ; 
instead of popular approval, condemnation; instead of 
life, death. He associated with the poor and lowly and 
became their friends, when he might have lived among the 
rich and great. He stood out as a champion of new truth 
against the ancient orthodoxies. He freed religion from 
the shackles of form and ceremony and special privilege, 
asserting that the Samaritan who does a kindly human 
act is a better man than a priest of the true faith who 
fails to take advantage of his chance to do so. He broke 
away from the rigid Sabbath law, and asserted that the 
Sabbath was made for man. He must have felt that men 
in general would see the humiliation involved in his 
poverty, yet he accepted it without a murmur for the 
sake of the cause so dear to his heart. And at the last 
the cumulative effect of his life of love failed in its eman- 
cipating work of unsealing the blind eyes of his enemies, 
and his end was what his friends feared and he himself 
anticipated, the cross. 

Thus his death cannot be dissociated from his life. 
Throughout his ministry he was the “Man of Sorrows,” 


Wuat I Know Azsout tHE ATONEMENT 65 


not for himself but for the intense loneliness due to the 
rejection of his offer of the love that meant insight and 
emancipation. Apart from what he previously did and 
was, his death would not have sacrificial value in any 
high degree. The price that he paid for our salvation be- 
gan in the wilderness and was completed on Calvary. 


III 
What Christ did for the early Christians he has also 


done for us, though we are apt to overlook our immediate 
indebtedness to him. What do I owe him? I could 
never answer that question in full, much less make ade- 
quate return to him. An accident befalls me on the 
street. J am among strangers when I am struck down 
by a passing car but I am not left to suffer by the way- 
side. Many good Samaritans begin at once to minister 
to me. I am carried to a hospital and there I receive 
surgical treatment. Kind nurses do their best to soothe 
my pain. If my case is difficult, the ablest physician 
available is called in consultation, even though I have 
not a dollar to my name. Nor is this because I am a 
Christian. I may be a Jew, a Mohammedan, or an 
atheist, so far as my benefactors know. Because I am 
a man, a child of God, the hand of Christ reaches out to 
me in my need and distress, through these various agents 
of his ministry. Throughout the extent of Christian civ- 
ilization every man, whatever his color, race or faith, is 
thus directly indebted to him. The modern hospital is 
Christ at work in his ministry of healing. 

Nor are my material obligations to him exhausted by 
such care. On the contrary that is largely incidental. 
Christ’s spirit is the very life of the social fabric in which 
I live and of which I am a part. The ordered liberty 
which enables me to carry out my projects and develop my 
interests with reasonable certainty is due to influences 
which have their origin in the gospel he preached and the 
hfe he lived. While the present social order has many 


66 Now I Know 


defects, it is immeasurably better than social disorder. Its 
strength and stability are in direct proportion to the truth, 
justice and love derived from Christ and built into it by 
its more devoted members. 

But valuable though these material blessings are, my 
greatest indebtedness to him is spiritual. He lived for 
me, suffered for me and died for me, that he might win 
my love and through that love of mine for him confer 
eternal life upon me. By this victory over temptation 
he assures me that I too can conquer. By his absolute 
devotion to the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, 
he insists that the highest blessedness of which my soul 
is capable is to be obtained, not by gaining earthly 
prizes, but by a like devotion to the abiding values of 
the spirit. By his loyalty to what is true, rather than to 
inherited beliefs which have done their work, he inspires 
me to sincerity. By his sacrificing love for those who 
rejected the gift of love he offered, he teaches me to rise 
above petulance and ingratitude, and strengthens me to 
go on in the proclamation of his love to men, even though 
those to whom I address it pay no attention to me. But 
above all, he teaches me to live with the horizon of 
eternity in view. How strange in the light of the 
brevity of life on earth, that we should spend so much 
of our energy in gathering treasures that we must leave 
behind when our day is done! We are like children 
playing on the shore of the ocean, building houses of 
sand which will be swept away in a few hours as the tide 
comes in. My answering love for him enables his love 
for me to interpenetrate my nature and give me perspec- 
tive. This qualifies me to realize that time is but the 
prelude of eternity, and death the portal of infinity. Alike 
in his teaching, example and witness through the lives 
of those in whom he has lived, I owe him my knowledge, 
as yet only vaguely understood, that my worth depends 
not upon what I shall leave behind me when I leave this 


Wuat I Know Axsovutr tue ATONEMENT 67 


world, but upon what I shall take with me. Were it 
not for what he has done for me I should still be living 
in the narrow prison house of the material. He has 
opened the windows of my soul upon God. He has 
given me by his sacrificing love rich and deep insight 
into hope, faith and love and the other heavenly qual- 
ities. 

Thus in so far as I accept the gifts he offers me, and 
walk in the road that he has laid out, I am released from 
the bondage of darkness and sin. The more I respond 
to his sacrificing love, the more I partake of his nature 
and the more his nature can and does interpenetrate 
mine. In this wise, he is destined to become the 
Emancipator, the Master, the Saviour, of the world. 
His death furnished driving power to his life of sacri- 
ficing love and the grave could not hold the Divine 
Deliverer. “Without the shedding of blood there is no 
remission of sins.” 


IV 


No transaction in which free personalities engage can 
yield its maximum profit if it be one-sided. This holds 
true even in our dealings with God himself. While he 
stands ready to give us more life, we are in no condition 
to take unless our stewardship of his previous largesses 
has led to the increase and refinement of our powers by 
its faithful traffic with every influence calculated to 
bring out their nobler qualities. In all his dealings with 
us, whether directly or indirectly through his various 
agents, our heavenly Father recognizes and respects the 
reciprocalness of the relationship. For our good, rather 
than his, although his good is also ours, he demands 
grace for grace, a return in kind from us for every gift 
he bestows upon us by his grace. Full recognition of 
this truth will reveal that the sacrificing love of Christ, 
by which I have learned to know God and have been 
reconciled to him, imposes definite responsibilities upon 


68 Now I Know 


me. Through its enlargement of my life, my obligations 
are increased. If I am freed from the limitations and 
burden of my ignorance and sin, that emancipation re- 
quires my enlistment in the crusade which will free 
others who have not yet taken advantage of their same 
privilege. This has always been recognized by alert and 
devoted beneficiaries of Christ’s atoning work. My con- 
dition of freedom and opportunity to-day is due to a long 
line of spiritual ancestors who acted as his agents and 
sacrificed themselves as Christ’s men in their contest 
against the powers of darkness and fought some of my 
battles for me before I came upon the scene. Wycliffe 
and Tyndale, in their struggle to give the Bible to the 
common people, Giordano Bruno, dying in sacrificial 
fire for the right to proclaim the truth as he saw it, Coper- 
nicus suffering denunciation and persecution in order to 
give a more adequate and comprehensive explanation of 
the movement of the heavens, together with a host of 
others known and unknown, are links in the living chain 
that reaches back through the centuries and binds me to 
Christ. 

When Patrick Hamilton died at the stake in St. An- 
drews, he kindled a flaming passion for justice and truth 
in the heart of John Knox. I am similarly indebted to 
the Pilgrims who braved the dangers of a hostile ocean 
and endured every hardship to worship God according 
to their convictions. The men who gave their lives in 
thousands to save this nation from disruption, were in 
their own way and according to the measure of their 
worth making atonement for the sin of human greed, 
carrying forward the work of Christ in the process and 
mediating his sacrifice. The same is true of the millions 
of young men who died in the Great War to make a 
better world. One and all, the hosts of those who have 
worked and suffered to shake off the strangle-hold of error 
and superstition have been purchasing with a price the 
release of unborn generations. 


Wuat I Know Asovut tut ATONEMENT 69 


This truth tends to make me the careful custodian of 
the values they have won for me. What was their motive ? 
What was the motive of Christ in working and suffering 
for me? Surely no man is vain enough to say and think 
that those who labored so strenuously to push aside the 
curtains of ignorance and sin and buy his freedom at the 
cost of their blood or life, made their sublime renunciations 
merely to give him the opportunity to live in easy free- 
dom. Nevertheless, multitudes who have been born to 
a great inheritance live the lives of spiritual spendthrifts. 
They would appropriate the privileges bought for them at 
so great a cost and do little or nothing in return. Because 
that cannot be done, they fritter their lives away in pur- 
suit of trivial and fleeting interests. 

When the halls of Oxford during the Great War were 
empty and her sons drilling for the conflict or already 
dying on the fields of Flanders, Professor Gilbert Murray 
uttered a great lament. Looking upon the wild riot of 
profiteering and spending in which the youth of England 
who were still at home were engaged, he said that they 
were not worthy of the sacrifice of her gifted sons. That 
those whose lives were protected by the blood of these 
young men, should be wantoning in sheer indifference to 
all that had been done for them, almost broke his heart. 
But that one-sidedness has always been the way of man 
in his stupidity and blindness. It was so when Christ 
was giving himself in his ministry and upon the cross. 
The world will never find peace until the atonement as 
an active principle which was supremely demonstrated on 
Calvary shall be reciprocated and become a universal 
motive of conduct. Once I have achieved the freedom 
made possible for me by the sacrificing love of Christ, 
my emancipation will be evidenced by the efforts I make 
to liberate others from the prison house of a fleshly mind. 

Thus the atonement is not an isolated event in history. 
It is the undying heart of the whole process of living 
here and hereafter. While its supreme manifestation 


70 Now I Know 


is in Christ, it also finds expression in every consecrated 
life. All progress depends upon this principle. In so 
far as I reciprocate the sacrificing love of Christ that 
freed me, I advance the kingdom of God; in so far as I 
fall short of doing it, I retard or impair that advance. 
Because Christ is the vine and I a branch, I share with 
him in my own limited way his great experiences, pur- 
poses and achievements. The atonement unites my frail 
person to his infinitude of divine love. He bore my sins 
and shortcomings “in his own body on the tree,” that I 
in turn, animated by his spirit, should give myself in 
sacrificing love to the great task of reconciling my 
ignorant and sinful fellows to the everliving God who 
is the Father of us all. This was what Irenaeus meant 
when he said, “he became what we are, that he might 
make us what he is.” 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT REGENERATION 


I 


Regeneration has a technical and rather formidable 
sound. The word has largely passed out of use in modern 
life, even in the pulpit, which usually clings to forms of 
speech long after they have disappeared elsewhere. Yet 
the idea which this word aims to express can never drop 
out of our speech since the corresponding experience is 
an essential factor in spiritual growth. Reduced to its 
simplest terms it means to be born again. The answer 
of Jesus to Nicodemus states a law as wide in its sweep 
as the plan of God for the life of man. He who would 
realize his destiny must be born from above. 

This raises two important questions, how and why? 
As to the first, birth is always a mystery. None can 
adequately explain his own coming into the world. When 
did I begin to exist? How did a few particles of matter, 
which in one aspect may be described in chemical terms, 
become the dwelling place of life and mind? The wisest 
of men cannot tell me. Yet here I am, and if I ama 
competent witness there was a day but a few years ago 
when I was not. I have no recollection beyond a certain 
date in early childhood, to say nothing of any time prior 
to the hour my parents have told me I first saw the light. 

Since I am unable, therefore, to explain my first or 
physical birth, it is not surprising that I cannot explain 
my second or spiritual birth. That bit of ignorance, 
however, is no sufficient reason for doubting its reality. 
I know that my nature has changed. There was a time 
when my outlook upon the world and its problems was 
altogether different. Since then I have grown in char- 
acter. I am not boasting when I say that I have more 

71 


12, Now I Know 


wisdom, poise, self-control, knowledge, goodness and faith 
than I once possessed. How it came about that I turned 
from the old paths and chose those in which I now delight 
to walk, I cannot tell. That inability does not lessen the 
importance of the fact of the change. There must have 
been a day in the past when a power from outside myself 
entered my life and became a guiding principle within 
me; or, putting the same truth in another way, when I 
developed an inward spiritual directivity. 

In answer to the second question none can deny the 
necessity for a rebirth in every man. Here is a child old 
enough for school. Shall the decision be left to his own 
inclinations whether to go or not to go? A parent would 
have to be sub-normal in intelligence to give him the 
choice. Every child requires constant pressure from 
above, particularly in his earlier and more formative 
years, or the powers within him would never develop in 
the right direction. His walk, manners, speech, and 
disposition have to be watched carefully to guard against 
the evil tendencies that will be sure to crop out, if his 
energies are to be kept flowing in the right direction. And 
after the best has been done for him and he has passed 
with apparent safety through the semi-barbarism of 
youth, his parents know there is no certainty that he may 
not yet become the victim of a rash or evil impulse. The 
carnal mind, the native selfishness, the path of least re- 
sistance are enmity against God. Hence the necessity of 
an experience which shall result in the release of the 
energies of the old Adam in us upon a higher plane, the 
sense of renewal, the process of trans-valuation by which 
old things pass away and all become new. 


IT 


Since it is a universe in which we live, we may be 
confident that a law which we discover working in any 
department of life, will, upon close scrutiny, be found at 
work in every other department, even though it may be 


Wuat I Know Azsout REGENERATION ffs: 


almost unrecognizable in some cases. Regeneration is no 
exception to this rule. It works as definitely in the mind 
as in the soul. A friend of mine after he had spent the 
earlier years of his life in business decided that he would 
study medicine. At first he found his studies very hard 
as his mind had grown rusty through long disuse but 
eventually he got along well except in chemistry. As the 
second year was coming to its close, it looked as though 
he was to be beaten. It seemed a slavish task to try to 
memorize a multitude of formulas, but strive as he would, 
he saw no reason or principle which united them in a 
system. Even with the help of a tutor, he could scarcely 
hope to grope through what seemed to him to be a jungle 
of disconnected facts. Late one night, poring over a 
text book, there came a sudden illumination. All at 
once his mind was put into possession of the secret which 
bound in a unitary system the diverse facts which were 
so elusive and fugitive when he depended upon his 
memory to hold them. From that moment he felt an 
assurance as strong as his previous doubt and, to his own 
delight and the surprise of his teachers, he leaped to a 
front place in his class. 

The famous essayist Hazlitt had a similar experience. 
As a young man he had a great love for books and little 
or no fondness for pictures. But one day he discovered 
an exhibition of old Italian Masters which had been sent 
from Paris for sale in London. Its effect upon him is 
best described in his own words: 


I was staggered when I saw the works there col- 
lected, and looked at them with wondering and long- 
ing eyes. A mist passed away from my sight; the 
scales fell off. A new sense came upon me, a new 
heaven and a new earth stood before me... . From 
that time I lived in a world of pictures. Battles, 
sieges, speeches in Parliament seemed mere idle 
noise and fury, ‘signifying nothing’ compared with 


74. Now I Know 


those mighty works that spoke to me in the eternal 
silence of thought. 


Henry Adams had a striking experience of the same 
nature while a student in Berlin in the early days of his 
long continued quest of an education. Up to this time 
he had believed Beethoven a bore and that his opinion 
was shared by every one except musicians. One day 
while sitting at his table in a beer garden, he was sur- 
prised to notice that his mind followed the movement of 
the symphony the orchestra was playing. He could not 
have been more astonished had he suddenly read a new 
language. A prison wall that barred his senses in one 
great region of life suddenly fell of its own accord, with- 
out so much as his knowing how it happened. From 
that day on, his appreciation of music increased, though 
many years were to pass before he was able to enjoy 
the “Gotterdamerung.” 


Til 


Doubtless everyone who has attained to some degree of 
mastery in any of the arts or crafts has had the same 
kind of experience. Some one eventful day he awak- 
ened to a sense of power hitherto unknown. Yet how- 
ever swift its coming, such an access of ability is never 
to be disjoined from the past experience of the person. 
tts explanation lies in part in his previous activities. 
The man to whom the secrets of chemistry were sud- 
denly unveiled, would never have had this revelation 
were it not for the sustained hours of toil in which he 
laboriously laid the foundations for his later structure 
of knowledge of that science. For years Hazlitt had 
lived in an artistic atmosphere, and Henry Adams had 
long been hearing music. 

Such facts suggest the conditions preliminary to the 
spiritual experience of regeneration. For while regenera- 
tion 1s something we can not do for ourselves, it can not 
be done for us unless we prepare the way. In the first place 


Wrat L Know Asout REGENERATION 15 


a man must be actually conscious of his need of renewal. 
“Create in me a clean heart, O God.” Then in the second 
place repentance must be followed and supported by 
faith. Otherwise sorrow for sin is only idle grief which 
burns itself out in worse than fruitless emotion. Faith 
is belief in and surrender of the self to the beneficent con- 
trol of the power of God incarnate in Christ. Where 
faith in its double aspect is an active principle of the 
soul, the ground is prepared and ready for the trans- 
formation wrought by regeneration. Then it is that God 
enters with the creative strength that produces the new 
birth. Hitherto suppressed capacities are given scope. 
The strengthened will is focused upon higher goals. <A 
new light illumines everything. The newly gained sense 
of unity can only be explained in terms of the Spirit of 
God, which has created a new moral personality by re- 
constructing the former divided self. Such is the marvel 
of the new birth that finds its classic illustrations in 
Saul of Tarsus, St. Francis Xavier, John Wesley, and a 
host of others in the history of the Christian church. 


IV 


Sometimes this reintegration of the divided self seems 
to take place with startling suddenness. At others, it 
appears to be the final bursting into bloom of a long 
period of quiet growth. Even when its manifestation is 
sudden, we may be sure that it is the outcome of causes 
that have been long at work. The dramatic conversion 
of Saul on the road to Damascus, which was the outward 
beginning of his splendid regeneration, was not a_ bolt 
from the blue. While hitherto he had appeared to be 
successful in rigidly suppressing every doubt as_ to 
whether he was right in rejecting Jesus, it was appear- 
ance only, for around that question as a centre a slow 
rebellion was going on and gathering strength in his mind 
under the threshold of consciousness. Misgivings would 
not down for long at a time. The vision of the ecstatic 


76 Now I Know 


face of the dying Stephen could not be erased from his 
memory. It was these smouldering fires which blazed 
out in vivid eruption on the Damascus road from the 
voleanic depths of his soul, and in the recoil of his soul 
he saw the heavenly vision which afterward he so faith- 
fully obeyed. Thereafter he devoted his powers to the 
proclamation of the Christian gospel with the zeal he had 
hitherto displayed in furthering the cause of Judaism. 
The qualities which made him so great a force in estab- 
lishing the new faith upon unshakable intellectual founda- 
tions were derived from his old environment. 

Regeneration does not, therefore, render needless but 
shows the extreme importance of early education in 
morals. Conversion, the decision to change from wrong 
to right, can never lift a man to a higher level than the 
ideal which made him discontented with his old life. 
When one grows up in an environment in which sin is 
regarded in negative terms of drinking, swearing and 
sensuality, he is bound to think of the life of regeneration 
as a life from which these activities have been expelled. 
In reality it is immeasurably more than that; it is a 
thoroughgoing renewal of personality in which old inter- 
ests dissolve and new ideals emerge in growth toward 
Christlikeness of character. But its beginning can never 
be on a higher level than that which was previously looked 
upon as the ideal. Because Saul of Tarsus was nurtured 
in the exalted tradition of a God who himself set men an 
example of the holiness he expected of them, he became the 
disseminator of spiritual life, mighty in vision, in mind, 
in spirit and in character. 

The question may be raised as to whether regeneration 
can do anything for the man who feels that his life has 
always set its face toward righteousness, and thus has 
escaped the torturing sense of sin and repentance. The 
answer is that is can do much for him because his confes- 
sion that his equilibrium has never been shattered proves 
that the depths of his spirit have never been probed. Re- 


Wuat I Know Asout REGENERATION rr 


generation is always a process and never a finished act. 
The experience of a divided mind, vacillating between good 
and evil, is more acute in some persons than in others, 
at some times than at others. Some say they do not feel 
the strain between the opposing elements of personality, 
but it would be unsafe to conclude on that account that 
they are to be envied. It may mean that they are keenly 
conscious of the grosser offenses, such aberrations as im- 
purity, sloth, and gluttony, and are victorious over them, 
but are utterly unaware of the higher sins of pride, vanity 
and self-sufficiency. Yet these are even more detrimental 
to the soul and as sure an indication that it is a house 
divided against itself. Hence regeneration is essential 
to all. The spirit of truth and righteousness must re- 
organize the personality before its powers can come to a 
focus upon the ideal and reach their full development. 


v 


The practical results of regeneration become evident in 
a variety of changes. First the disposition is trans- 
formed. Where it was indolent, sensual, or ill-tempered, 
it becomes zealous, self-controlled and kindly. While it 
is true that these results are not perfected in an hour, 
but are the outcome of sustained discipline and growth, 
there is a new set toward them as different in bearing, as 
the difference between that of childhood and manhood. 
Though the personality before and after regeneration is 
made up of the same materials, the combination is so dif- 
ferent as to issue in a “new creature.” 

But the outstanding mark of regeneration is seen in 
the change of motives which control him who has ex- 
perienced it. These move on a different plane. The 
material and the sensual no longer exercise their former 
despotic sway over his life. Old landmarks lose their 
meaning in the new world in which the regenerated man 
lives. But as old lights grow dim others of greater 
luminosity take their places. Values hitherto but vaguely 


78 Now I Kyow 


seen and understood or altogether missed take their right- 
ful place in his esteem. He finds himself able to put 
into practice an estimate of human worth that takes ac- 
count not of what a man leaves behind him when he dies, 
but of what he carries with him in those spiritual qualities 
which elude all our arithmetic. Gold and granite are alike 
to God, to whom they are both material things. Sym- 
pathy, purity, courage and love are the standards of his 
judgment. He who is rich in these treasures of the soul 
may march face forward to meet any emergency, for he 
knows that he has an account with God which he can 
never overdraw. 

Baron Frederick von Hiigel tells of a mountain torrent 
in the Italian Alps that tears with resounding roar 
through a deep and sunless gorge without rest and ap- 
parently without fruit. The sterility of its struggle, how- 
ever, is only apparent, for when at last it breaks its way 
through down to sea level, it spreads out as a peaceful 
fertilizing river, flowing slowly and serenely through the 
rich plains of Piedmont. This is a parable of the re- 
generated life. The early passions and strains represent 
the dark cavernous gorges of experience through which 
the soul bores its way before it emerges on the wide levels 
of a life of mercy and love. To the superficial eye these 
riots of passion and willfulness seem needless and futile. 
Why should we be tormented with them? Is it not that 
the stuff of which our lives are made may be strengthened, 
not alone that they may withstand ‘“‘the shocks of doom,” 
but that they may become fit dwelling places of the 
Eternal ¢ 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT SALVATION 


I 


Salvation is the central aim of every form of religion. 
The bushman in Australia, the savage of equatorial 
Africa, the Chinaman cowed by evil spirits, as well as the 
Mohammedan and Jew, the lowly Christian or the pro- 
found Christian philosopher, are all alike in their hunger 
to attain it. Essentially salvation means escape from 
whatever forces threaten or seem to threaten destruction. 
These hedge us about from our infancy, “Change and 
decay in all around I see.” The strongest of men soon 
learns his frailty. There are multitudinous forces over 
which the consolidated strength of mankind exercises no 
control whatever; wind and tides and weather are always 
at work breaking down what man has built up with great 
labor. Even in the midst of all our boasted enlighten- 
ment, wars and rumors of wars, famine, pestilence and 
unrest are no strangers to us. Class and racial conflicts 
are waged in the most favoured of nations, and a brood- 
ing spirit of pessimism has settled over the modern world. 
Men are afraid of the future. They do not know what 
they ought to do to be saved. In their perplexity they fix 
upon this or that as a cause of their troubles. 

It is, however, in our more restricted and direct per- 
sonal interests that we are most acutely conscious of the 
need of salvation. We gain no abiding sense of security 
from any earthly safeguards that we can rear for our 
protection. We know that the Greek proverb is right in 
affirming that “security is mortal’s chiefest enemy,” be- 
cause as a rule it is built on the sand. ‘To-morrow ill 
health may strike us down. Our cherished plans may 
come to naught. Disappointment is a constant source of 

79 


80 Now I Know 


embitterment. And so the heart of man is always reach- 
ing out for a peace and assurance that nothing temporal 
can satisfy. The desire for salvation is the mainspring 
of religion. 


at 


What is salvation? We know that the subject occupies 
a large place in the Bible, both in the Old Testament and 
the New. The Psalmist plays upon this theme with con- 
stant variations. ‘‘He restoreth my soul.” When my 
inner life is shattered because of the collapse of hope, 
when trouble has done its worst, the Lord builds again 
the broken structure, and gives me confidence even amidst 
the shadow of death. He is my light and my salvation 
making me immune to fear. He who is clothed with 
honor and majesty because of his love and care for me 
will come to my defense. He is always ready to restore 
to me the joy of my salvation and to uphold me with his 
free spirit. 

In the New Testament this assurance is even more 
strongly emphasized and the reasons for it are clearer. 
The purpose of Jesus was to save the lost. While he 
rarely used the word “salvation,” the idea which it ex- 
presses found frequent place in his teaching. Three of his 
parables illustrate it with singular lucidity. These parables 
teach that there are degrees of lostness. The first of 
these is that of the lost coin. The woman who owned this 
piece of silver, lit her candle and swept her house care- 
fully and sought diligently until it was found. The coin 
was in the house. She knew that. If she had dropped it 
upon a crowded street in Jerusalem, her loss would have 
been irretrievable and search therefore useless. The 
second parable illustrating this process of salvation is that 
of the lost sheep. The owner having secured his other 
ninety-and nine in the fold, goes out into the wilderness 
to seek for the one that has strayed. Here also the quest 
is successful and the wandering sheep is restored to its 


Wuat I Know Axpovut SALvaTIoNn 81 


place in the flock. But again the lost condition was not 
absolute or a successful quest would have been impossible. 
If the wanderer had fallen a victim to a wild animal all 
search however diligent would have proved fruitless. 

The third and greatest of these parables, however, 
which are all recorded in the fifteenth chapter of St. Luke, 
is that of the lost son, so typical of many another human 
hfe. This youth had wandered far away and had sunk 
to a nameless state of degradation. MJealizing his condi- 
tion, he decided to return to his father who received him 
while still a great way off and restored him to his place 
in the household. No sublimer or more consoling words 
ever fell from human lips than these which carry a 
message so rich in hope for multitudes who have wandered 
from the paths of rectitude or fallen into the abyss of sin. 
All such are lost and salvation is restoration to their right- 
ful place. 


Tit 


Let us ask more specifically, from what are we seeking 
to be saved? I look to my fellows for an answer, as their 
motives will probably throw light upon my own. Re- 
cently M. Coué visited the United States. The interest 
displayed by millions in his message was intense. No 
conquering hero returning to the land that sent him 
forth, could have received greater attention. No preacher 
of spiritual values in all the world could hope for such a 
reception and such help in the continued proclamation of 
his message by the daily press and all the other instru- 
ments of publicity. It is safe to say that the greatest 
constructive scholar or scientist, a Pasteur or a Metch- 
nikoff, would not have aroused a modicum of the interest 
aroused by M. Coueé. 

What is the reason for the difference? It is due to the 
agonizing desire of people to have their bodily ailments 
cured. Let any man of promise arise, however much of 
a quack he may afterward turn out to be, who assures 


82 Now I Know 


healing to those who are suffering physical deformity or 
pain, and thousands will flock to him. ‘This almost panic- 
stricken search for health accounts for the vogue of Chris- 
tian Science. Its primary promises are to the body rather 
than to the soul, and therefore, in spite of its thoroughly 
unscientific temper and its flagrant denial of several of 
the essential principles of the Christian gospel, it has 
won the suffrage of a multitude who have been brought 
up in the Christian church. Whatever the form their 
search for release from pain may take, after every fresh 
failure men are usually ready “to try something new” 
to escape from it. 

In the second place, men seek a way of escape from 
anxiety. We are afflicted by disturbing fears. The 
future often throws a dark shadow across our pathway. 
What will bring confidence to those of timid temper who 
have lost their nerve as they have watched many of their 
neighbors go down under the strain and drop from the 
ranks? Here nature exercises a strong curative ministry. 
The threat of disaster always hangs over the bird in her 
nest. When an enemy appears she is all aflutter with 
excitement. But when the danger passes, she is soon 
happy again. It is the same with man up to a certain 
point. Man, however, has what the bird has not, both 
memory and meditative power which enable him to un- 
derstand the formidableness of the forces arrayed against 
him, so that he is often intimidated by the fear of destruc- 
tion even when there is no indication of danger. There 
are multitudes who never escape from this shadow. 

The third evil from which men seek release is sin, or 
rather the consequences of sin. A few years ago, Sir 
Oliver Lodge made a statement which aroused widespread 
comment, to the effect that in our generation men are not 
worrying about their sins. This is unquestionably true, 
but it is probably equally true that they never did. The 
conscience of mankind is as keen in this age as ever in 
the past. If Sir Oliver had said that men to-day are not 


Wuat I Know Asovur SatvatTion 83 


worrying as they once did about the consequences of their 
sins, he would have been nearer the mark. Our ancestors 
had a much more vivid belief in future punishment than 
we, and consequently they dwelt more upon the fears in- 
spired by the penal fires which they had dramatized so 
menacingly. This explains the appearance of intensity in 
their sense of sin in contrast with ours. 

For all that, in the depths of their souls, men of every 
type seek deliverance from sin. Often this seeking is a 
means of instruction to them for out of it they come to 
learn the cause of their unrest. Even though they do not 
believe in a material hell, they understand that sin exacts 
a heavy penalty. It coarsens the texture of the spirit, 
deadens the sensibilities, narrows the outlook and destroys 
the appreciation of beauty, impairs the recognition of 
truth and corrodes the soul. In brief, it is death to the 
nobler elements in our nature. The sinner’s punishment 
is his badness. As man becomes conscious of his sub- 
limity as a child of God, he seeks with increasing zeal to 
find salvation from the control of the carnal mind which, 
if unchecked, will destroy his nobler qualities. In spite of 
all attempts to dilute the poison of sin, it remains a 
horrible reality from which all sane men wish to escape. 


IV 


The Old Testament Hebrew word translated “‘salvation” 
means broad or spacious. Later this developed into the 
idea of deliverance. Thus it came to mean the enlarge- 
ment of the soul; so that salvation is essentially another 
name for growth. The man who is saved is the man who 
is growing in the right direction. Hence the true doctrine 
of salvation is growth toward the fulness of the stature of 
Christ. Historically the emphasis has been placed in the 
teaching of the church upon escape from punishment here- 
after. Doubtless salvation does contain this idea of de- 
liverance from the future ills, but it is above all a present 
experience. Important though it may be to be delivered 


84. Now I Know 


from the evils which threaten us after death, it is a mis- 
take to emphasize this to such an extent that we overlook 
deliverances open to us this side of death. Obviously if 
we can get a vital hold upon salvation now, we may 
reasonably leave the future to take care of itself. “Suffi- 
cient unto the day is the evil thereof,” and also the good. 

A few illustrations from life may serve to clarify our 
ideas of salvation in several of its aspects. Here is a 
man who suddenly realizes that he is ignorant. He 
chafes under this limitation and that chafing leads to a 
determination to secure an education. He begins to read 
and study. Eventually his horizons widen until he is 
recognized as an educated man. He is saved from his 
former ignorance. Here is another man who is a victim 
of an evil habit or disposition. Realizing the handicap 
which this imposes upon him, he casts himself upon God’s 
mercy and the chains which bound him are broken. A 
new habit or disposition is formed. He is saved from 
his old nature and becomes a new man, finding joy in his 
release and having his usefulness greatly enhanced. Sal- 
vation is a process of enlargement which gives liberation 
to man’s spiritual nature. It results in his transforma- 
tion by the renewing of his mind. 


Vv 


Since the need of salvation is universally recognized, 
it is not surprising that a variety of methods by which it 
is to be achieved have been formulated. How am I to 
escape from the lost condition which I share with all 
men? The Roman Catholic gives one answer. I must 
accept the dogmas of the true church, however great the 
strain upon my intellect. Then the church will save me. 
The Presbyterian counters with another list of doctrines 
that must be accepted though he gives more freedom of 
interpretation than the Roman Catholic. The rigid Bap- 
tist gives yet another answer. Unless I am immersed I 
cannot be saved. The High Churchman has still another 


Wuat I Know Azsout SALvAaTIon 85 


formula. The sacraments duly administered by a priest 
in the true line of apostolic succession are my door of 
hope. But the evangelist of most Protestant churches 
will not acknowledge any of these methods as guarantees 
of salvation. He says I must accept the atoning sacrifice 
of Christ in the terms in which he states it. So, the plan 
and method of salvation, instead of being presented as a 
self-evident proposition which all normal minds could 
accept, has been a storm center around which many an 
acrid debate has raged. Not least among the reasons for 
the failure of the church to retain the respect of multi- 
tudes of people is the conviction that many of these dif- 
ferences of opinion are upon issues that do not go to the 
root of the matter. 

We must never allow an erroneous or inadequate ex- 
planation of an experience, however, to cause us to deny 
the reality of the experience. In the case of every 
method mentioned, men can be found who believe that 
they were saved by it. Every branch of the church has 
its saints. Ask them the secret of their virtues and they 
will often fix upon what you may deem some quite acci- 
dental explanation. But a discriminating second thought 
will usually reveal that behind the sacraments of the 
High Churchman, or the particular formula of the 
evangelist, there lies the common experience of the love 
of God mediated through a consecrated personality. I 
have often heard persons of saintly character ascribe 
whatever virtue they possessed to some narrow tenet of 
their sect whereas the virtue of their virtue lay in the 
fact that it was beyond the power of this tenet to spoil. 
We must be careful in accepting the explanations men 
give of their own religious experiences. If nobility of 
character were enough to justify the claims of any cult 
for the franchise of mankind, we would be in a state of 
confusion worse than that which confounds us now. 
very non-Christian faith, as well as every Christian sect 
can put forward heroic saints of apparently equal worth. 


86 Now I Know 


The secret of them all, realized through a wide variety of 
forms, is communion with God. 


VI 


Owing to the despotism which the dramatic exercises 
upon our imagination, we are apt to think that the best 
proof of salvation is found in the reclamation of the 
derelict. Now this is not to be disparaged. The power 
that changes a drunkard into a man of self-control and 
piety is of God. This is not as important an exhibition, 
however, of the redemptive principle as the association 
of multitudes of men in a stable society, the foundation 
of which is a more or less adequate grasp of the truth 
of the Christian gospel. That so many ward off drunken- 
ness and live clean lives, is surely a clearer testimony of 
saving power than the fewer number of derelicts that are 
reclaimed. The strongest proof that the gospel “is the 
power of God unto salvation” is not the harvest reaped 
by the Salvation Army but the ethical level of the Chris- 
tion community in general. It is far better to prevent 
a man from falling than to pull him bespattered with 
filth out of the ditch. But people are usually more strik- 
ingly impressed by the latter than the former. 

This brings me to a consideration of the method of 
Jesus. How did he save the men who were most inti- 
mately associated with him? He educated them. They 
listened to him as he preached to the multitudes or dealt 
with a single person, such as the woman at the well. They 
watched him heal the sick and give tranquillity to those 
of fevered mind. They followed him into his retire- 
ment and found him in meditation. When the day’s toil 
and travel were over, in the silence of the open under 
the starry sky, they talked with him in tender intimacy 
about the deep things of God. As his personality and 
theirs interpenectrated, each the other, their souls ex- 
panded in the process and their spiritual sensibilities 


Wuat I Know Axsout SALvaTion 87 


became acute. They realized that they were born to an 
imperishable destiny. 

This was not all. There came a day when they under- 
stood that it was their duty to go out and do for other 
men what he had done for them. [very great spiritual 
discovery is followed by an urgent disposition to commu- 
nicate the secret. I know a man of wide and profound 
knowledge whose influence is not at all commensurate 
with his power, because he has never exerted himself 
to give the world the results of his study and his thought. 
His inarticulateness robs him of his rightful weight in 
the community. Gray suggested in his famous elegy that 
there are Miltons and Cromwells lying in forgotten graves 
in many a churchyard, but mankind is none the better 
for their unrealized potentialities. 

Jesus did not allow his disciples to make this mistake. 
Doubtless it would have been much more in accordance 
with their inclinations to remain with him in the absorb- 
ing delights and benefits of his company. But when 
Peter suggested to them that they continue on the Mount 
of Transfiguration, Jesus immediately told him of the 
necessity of going down to the plains below to express in 
action the inspiration they had gained above. He trained 
them to do his work, and sent them forth to do it, while 
he was still with them. In their first efforts they made 
the mistakes of all beginners. ‘Their successes were dis- 
appointing. They were often impatient and discouraged. 
Eventually their powers enlarged, however, and these 
frail men became the human means by which the gospel 
of the Risen Saviour found lodgment in the mind of the 
race, and was organized in the church. Before they were 
capable of so tremendous a task, they had to serve a long 
apprenticeship in giving expression to what they had 
learned at the feet of their Master. While the emotions 
are an essential element in religion, if they had depended 
upon emotional effervescence solely, they would have 
failed of these permanent results. That is the fatal weak- 


88 Now I Know 


ness of popular evangelism. Salvation manifests itself 
in steadfast action which is permeated by the spirit and 
purpose of Christ. 


VII 


The essential secret of salvation yet remains to be told. 
It is an axiom of biology that life comes only from life. 
There was a time men thought that this was not true 
and that living things could be generated from the dead 
chemicals which they animate. In those days, scientific 
students used to make a solution of water and hay and 
after boiling to sterilize it, put it away ina jar. Ina few 
days, under a microscope, it would be seen to be teeming 
with life and they rushed to the conclusion that this had 
been spontaneously generated. But Pasteur showed the 
fallacy of this conclusion. When the solution was placed 
in a container hermetically sealed, after it had been thor- 
oughly sterilized, ten thousand years might pass and 
there would be no appearance of life. The science of 
modern medicine rests upon the accuracy of this principle. 

There is often a parallel between the physical and the 
spiritual. The more abundant life, called salvation, can- 
not be spontaneously generated in the natural man. To 
be experienced, it must be born from above which is 
another way of saying that Christ must enter and take 
possession. Christ in the human soul is salvation, deliv- 
erance from the control of the lower elements in our 
nature, from impurity of motive, from fear and above 
all, from failure and inability to develop the divine 
powers entrusted to us as children of God. Salvation is 
thus a present possession and a future attainment. 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT THE CHRISTIAN 


I 


Who is the Christian? There is no single generally 
accepted answer. Nearly two hundred answers have been 
given to it in this country alone, which have crystallized 
into institutions, each of which once did, if it does not 
do so still, claim to be the one repository of the truth of 
God. The partitions between these different churches 
are in most cases now breaking down. The former pre}- 
udices and jealousies have been modified. It is plain 
however, that not one of these churches would ever have 
been founded if those who launched it had believed in the 
Christianity of the church they were leaving. There is 
therefore no Catholic church in the true sense of that 
word, notwithstanding the claims made by several sects 
to be recognized as the one true church of Christ. 

Every church with a creed or definite form of govern- 
ment automatically excludes others who are obviously 
Christians from its membership. A distinguished ecclesi- 
astic has defined the Christian Church as “The great 
company of the baptized.” But this definition overlooks 
the obvious fact that many a baptized man is a scoundrel, 
and sometimes an unbaptized man is a saint, as the 
Quakers prove. Thus every external test, whether it be 
subscription to a creed, baptism by one form or another, 
a supposed tactual transmission of spiritual power known 
as apostolic succession, or any formal method whatever, 
breaks down when subjected to analysis. Yet the mind 
refuses to withdraw its demand for some distinctive mark 
which will enable us to divide mankind into two groups, 
the Christian and the non-Christian. 

89 


90 Now I Know 


1 


Having failed to find a satisfying definition of the 
Christian by the traditional line of approach, let us re- 
verse the process and see if we cannot answer the ques- 
tion by making our immediate experience our point of 
departure. If the word Christian contains any vitally 
distinctive meaning, that meaning will be registered in 
character. Unless Christianity can prove that its dey- 
otees acquire a living distinction that it calls eternal 
life which is not found in devotees of other faiths, we 
can never hope for the world sovereignty of Christ. 
What then are the essential qualities which together 
constitute the outward signs of the inward presence of 
eternal life in the Christian ¢ 

In order to answer this question let us build up as it 
were an ideal personality, whose character all sensible 
men will agree can be truthfully described by the title 
Christian. This method was used long ago by the Greek 
philosophers, including Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. 
They looked upon virtuous character as a product of the 
interweaving of different and contrasted qualities into 
the varied and yet harmonious fabric of a perfectly de- 
veloped manhood. The qualities which form the fitting 
materials of the ‘“‘royal web” are woven on the loom of 
circumstance and self-discipline. The finished fabric con- 
sists of that combination of strength and courage, gentle- 
ness and kindness, daring and restraint, which constitutes 
the kind of man to whom the world instinctively yields 
its homage. 


sea8 


I realize that in assembling the virtues which should 
be wrought into the make-up of Christian personality, I 
am likely to overlook qualities which others would regard 
as essential. Such an assembling is sure to be more or 
less arbitrary owing to differences of experience and tem- 
perament which characterize those engaged in it. How- 


Wuat I Know Axsovut THE CHRISTIAN 91 


ever, the inadequacy of my treatment should in no wise 
invalidate the method, for it only claims to be suggestive. 
Tt will best accomplish my purpose if it prompts the 
reader to fill in the details which are lacking, or to restore 
the perspective where the picture is out of drawing. 

The first and most fundamental of all the elements of 
Christian personality is integrity. This is indeed so basic 
that it should be regarded as forming the warp in which 
all the other qualities are enmeshed. The moral grandeur 
of integrity gives it a central place in the ensemble of 
virtues which in their balanced combination character- 
ize the Christian. 

Integrity is often confused with honesty, but it is 
a principle with a much wider reach. The honest man 
is the man whose ‘“‘word is as good as his bond.” ‘The 
man of integrity is not satisfied with carrying out his 
promises. Tirst he sees to it that they cover all the 
rights of the case. Honesty is opposed to direct fraud, 
but it is satisfied with fulfilling the letter of the law. 
Integrity, on the other hand, respects the rights of other 
men in all the relations of life, giving to every one his 
due whether it be property, reputation, honor, apprecia- 
tion, or any other character value. The modern finan- 
cial, industrial and commercial system is imposed upon 
honesty as a base, but it is still far removed in prac- 
tice from the ideal of integrity. A social order in 
which integrity held a controlling place would reduce 
injustice to a minimum. Dividends and profits would 
sink to a minor place in such a system and the primary 
motive would be the welfare governing every plan and act 
of all. The true Christian is a man of integrity. 


IV 


Into this warp many qualities must be woven before 
the pattern of the perfect man is attained. Among them 
courage holds a foremost place. In our time we are not 
accustomed to think of courage as a preéminently Chris- 


92 Now I Know 


tian virtue. A man may be rather widely known among 
us as a Christian without ever displaying any evidence 
of moral strength. Historically, however, something very 
different was the rule. The early Christians were perse- 
cuted and suffered bitterly for their faith. They had to 
have great convictions in order to endure their social dis- 
abilities. In the time of the persecution under Diocletian, 
a young officer named Marinus, in the Roman army, was 
stationed at Cesarea in Palestine. He was able and faith- 
ful in the discharge of his duties and was on the eve of 
being appointed to a captaincy. Then through jealousy 
one of his fellow officers charged that he was a Christian. 
He was called before his superior officer and having con- 
fessed that the accusation was true he was given three 
hours to deny his faith. Before deciding upon his course 
he went to a small Christian church and told the venerable 
bishop of his trouble. The bishop took the Bible in one 
hand, and the soldier’s sword in the other, saying ‘‘This 
is your choice.” Without hesitation the officer grasped 
the Bible, and went back to his commander saying that he 
was and would remain a Christian. Instead of receiving 
promotion he was put to death. 

Men are not now persecuted for professing allegiance 
to Christ. In fact a Christian profession is now the easy 
and proper thing to make. To become an avowed Chris- 
tian, which, as popularly interpreted, means to join the 
church, requires little or no moral courage in this and 
many other countries. The differences in conduct be- 
tween the majority of those who profess such allegiance 
and their neighbors who remain aloof from the church is 
usually negligible. This must not be taken to mean, how- 
ever, that the warning of Jesus that his followers would 
be persecuted for righteousness’ sake has been abrogated 
or outgrown because the world is through persecuting 
Christians not only for professing but for living up to 
their name. On the contrary, the sacrifices of real dis- 
cipleship were probably never more exacting than they 


Wuat I Know Asovut tHe CurisTIAN 93 


are now. In the face of the threat of physical violence 
for exercising freedom of conscience, a host of martyrs 
in the olden time met the situation in the spirit of Mar- 
inus. ternal life showed its inward presence in them 
by releasing unknown reserves of strength, so that if the 
occasion required, they died the death of heroes. 

The strength of character required to stand against a 
hostile public opinion is found less frequently among us 
than when, in days of old, obscure men and tender women 
were found who were faithful unto death. Few exhibit 
stamina enough to endure the temptation to compromise 
to save a threatened income. There are many evils which 
are now undermining the foundations of the kingdom of 
God in the hearts of men, and great courage is necessary 
to withstand them. Apparently, it takes braver Christians 
than the average of to-day to speak out against entrenched 
wrong. No man can be a good soldier of Jesus Christ, let 
no one doubt, without a large fund of courage on which to 
draw in order to enable him to endure the hostility and 
ostracism which Jesus said would be the portion of his 
genuine followers. 


avi 


Another essential element in Christian personality is 
a hospitable intelligence. Like courage this is not usually 
among us a conspicuous Christian virtue, and it is safe 
to say that many of the weaknesses and blunders of the 
church are due to the lack of this desirable quality. 
While it is true that a man may be highly intelligent 
without being a Christian, he cannot be an effective 
Christian without being an intelligent student of values. 
A large number of conventional Christians are utterly at 
sea when any new or strange doctrine makes an appeal 
for their franchise. They have not the mental strength 
and insight required to analyze it or to relate it to the 
body of truth to which they already subscribe. Hence 
such a cult as Christian Science has no difficulty in palm- 


94. Now I Know 


ing its illogical tenets off as Christian upon many cloudy- 
minded church people. No intelligent student of the 
values embodied in the outstanding truths of the Bible 
and their place in reason—God, man, sin, Christ, the 
Cross, and salvation—could for a moment be seduced by 
so inadequate a presentation of the gospel as that given 
by this cult. Notwithstanding the proverb, “ignorance 
is a doubtful bliss, and error a treacherous ally.” 

Nor is the Christian restricted in the use of his intelli- 
gence to an examination and valuation of the doctrines of 
the church. It must be applied to all the problems of life. 
A multitude of voices are constantly clamoring for our suf- 
frage, and it is our duty to scrutinize their claims care- 
fully before giving them our support. How readily people 
respond to catchwords and without investigation cry out 
against men or movements because they are labeled so- 
cialistic or unorthodox! Before a decision is rendered 
in any issue under discussion, standards of value on 
which we have learned to depend should be applied. 
Prejudice is a dangerous guide, and leads many a traveler 
off the trail of truth. The emotions are poor judges, but 
they are always ready to usurp the place of the intellect, 
unless they are held in with a stiff rein. The Christian 
is a man whose first interest is the discovery of the truth. 
This is a high and difficult ideal, but the practice of it 
proves our kinship to Christ. 


VI 


Public spirit is another quality that must be woven 
into the fabric of that perfect manhood our Lord com- 
manded us to strive to work for in his words, ‘“‘Be ye per- 
fect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” The 
springs of action in every public-spirited man take their 
rise in a sense of human brotherhood. He may not al- 
ways be conscious of it, but a love for mankind is always 
his guiding purpose. At bottom this motive is missionary 
in principle. In principle there is no difference between 


Wuat I Know Apovut THE CHRISTIAN 95 


concern for the welfare of our own village and the wel- 
fare of alien lands. If a man has no public spirit what- 
ever, he is not a Christian. A Christian is loyal to the 
common good. He is interested in hygiene, in housing, in 
education, in a better citizenship, in the morale of the 
community. Some ask of any proposed line of action, 
“what will it do for me?” and others “what will it do 
for the kingdom of God?’ The man of public spirit is 
always to be classed with the second of these two, and 
though he may not realize it, is near to Christ. 

Alas! So great are the frailties of human nature, that 
most people are content if the streets are well paved 
and cleaned, and the water pure in their neighborhood. 
After that, they care little for the conditions in other 
neighborboods or they lack the imagination to visualize 
the public welfare as a whole. They feel no responsi- 
bility beyond a narrow precinct. They prefer low taxes 
to the best school equipment and well paid teachers. 
How would the government fare if it had to depend for 
its income on the voluntary contributions of its citizens ? 
Doubtless there would be an extensive redistribution of 
the taxes. Many a man would dodge his obligations al- 
together, and others, rich in enthusiasm, would carry 
more than their share of the common burden. The hope 
of the race hes in its men who are not content with their 
own well-being but find delight in giving much of their 
time and strength to the advancement of the common wel- 
fare. The Christian is a man of public spirit. 


VLE 


Still another of the elemental virtues that must be- 
come a part of a complete Christian personality is grace 
or charm. While the more rugged qualities are neces- 
sary and good, they are not enough. Though their posi- 
tion was almost impregnable, many a battle has been lost 
by men who did not see that gentleness and tact would 
have saved the day for their intense righteous force. 


96 Now I Know 


Charm has a penetrating quality that disarms opposition 
and opens up the inner citadel of another’s soul. ‘The 
children of the world have never lost sight of this re- 
source. They have never forgotten to make full use of 
beauty and grace in making their appeal for the fran- 
chise of mankind. 

When the Puritans banished music and pictures from 
the churches, they threw away their chance of a com- 
plete victory for their cause. Notwithstanding all their 
splendid qualities, they lost ground which they were un- 
able to recover and alienated many potential friends be- 
cause they did not appreciate the necessity of placating 
those with whom they disagreed. ‘They were not urbane. 
All men are susceptible to kindness, which at bottom is 
simply a recognition and a tribute to their worth. Flor- 
ence Nightingale would never have surmounted the ap- 
parently insuperable difficulties that blocked her path con- 
tinually, were it not for the charm of manner with which 
she approached the men whose help she needed. If those 
who believe that they are the official guardians of virtue 
were more considerate in their attitude toward those 
whom they accuse of breaking the Sabbath or denying 
the faith, their influence would be far more effective. 
The Christian is a man of gracious spirit, because he 
loves his fellow men. 


VIII 


There are many other qualities of mind, heart and mo- 
tive that must have a definite place in the web of Chris- 
tian personality. Loyalty and reverence, hope, faith, 
enthusiasm and restraint, each has its place in the life 
of the mature Christian. He lives in two worlds, the 
present and the future, and on two planes, the practical 
and immediate on the one side, and the ideal and far 
off on the other. But valuable though all these qualities 
are singly, they have not sufficient power of coherence to 
hold themselves together in a crisis. Under the strain of 


Wuat | Know Axpovut tut CHRISTIAN 97 


a great temptation they would fall apart and the per- 
sonality disintegrate. 

Some unifying element must enter into the texture of 
a man’s being or he cannot meet the tests of life. If 
that unifying element is equal to its task, even though 
he is lacking in full measure some of the qualities I have 
named, he will come off victor in his struggle to achieve 
the impossible. Wilberforce, Canon Barnett, Clara Bar- 
ton, Father Damien are illustrations of how most bene- 
factors of the race worked against heavy odds. This one 
priceless gift gave driving power to their other qualities 
and enabled them to overcome their handicaps. This uni- 
fying element is the most essential in the entire fabric 
of Christian personality, for upon its possession or ab- 
sence depends the answer to the question, as to whether 
a man has the right to the name of Christian. I refer to 
the spirit of Christ. Without it no man can be a mem- 
ber of the chosen company of the redeemed. “If a man 
have not the spirit of Christ he is none of his.” That 
spirit’s binding power integrates the various qualities I 
have named and gives them abiding coherence. The an- 
swer to the question, who is the Christian, reduced to the 
simplest terms is this—the man whose soul is full to the 
point of saturation of the spirit of Christ. 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT THE CHRISTIAN’S 
DUTY 


af 


To have integrity, courage, a hospitable intelligence, 
public spirit, charm, loyalty, reverence and other virtues 
assembled in a personality in which they are bound to- 
gether by the spirit of Christ is to approximate to the 
ideal in character. But what can a character of this 
kind accomplish? Character, however exalted, is not 
an end in itself. The real value of anything consists 
in what it does, as well as in what it is. Take a loco- 
motive just finished in the factory. ‘To the machinists 
who have worked upon it, it is a thing of beauty. The 
best materials, we will say, have gone into its making. 
The proportions are as near perfection as human engi- 
neering can attain. Yet it has not been built to look at. 
When the fires are kindled and the eager steam pushes 
the cylinders and drives the pistons, its real value be- 
gins to become evident. The wisdom and foresight of its 
makers are proved only when it gives a demonstration 
of its ability to carry a load of freight or passenger cars 
along the rails. ‘This alone justifies the strain and toil 
that has gone into its building. 

It is difficult to realize the vast amount of energy, time 
and thought, near and remote, which went into such a 
creation. What a mighty past comes to a focus in it! 
In every puff of escaping steam, Hero of Alexandria 
speaks across more than two thousand years, and a chorus 
of voices which include Della Porta, Savery, Papin and 
Newcomen, can also be heard before Watt’s deep tones 
boom out in the exultation of victory. A myriad of others, 
no less necessary because unknown, swell the ground tone 

98 


Wuat I Know Axpovut THe Curistian’s Duty 99 


as the great engine drives on, rocking the very earth, and 
vying with the thunder in its full-throated roar. The men 
who dug the iron and the coal are represented there; the 
men who learned how to refine the ore and mix the molten 
metal with carbon so that they transformed it into steel ; 
the men who carried the ore from the mine to the furnace, 
and from the furnace to the factory, on to the men who 
gave it final form. These and a host of others standing 
so far back amid the shadows that we do not see them, 
wrought to make this engine. Their thought, labor and 
devotion reach their climax and find their justification 
in what this locomotive does as ‘a common carrier’ for 
their fellows, whom they do not know and will never see. 

If such labor and concentration of motive are the price 
that must be paid for the making of a thing without life, 
that will work, all the materials of which were already 
in existence, how much greater must have been the ex- 
penditure of time, thought and purpose that goes into 
the making of a Christian man! Here also multitudes 
have worked, dimly groping their way toward the light 
that those who came after them might enjoy blessings 
which they themselves were never to know. They laid 
the foundations of society. They learned the secrets of 
nature. They struggled to unravel the tangled skein of 
existence. Always they were working under an inner 
compulsion which they did not generate. No man creates 
his own Christian life, however much he may co-operate 
in its creation. God can not do it, however much he 
may co-operate in its creation. God waited for the first 
Adam through countless ages. And even after the crea- 
ture provided the measure of co-operation that enabled 
him to create man and developed him to a high capac- 
ity, God had still to wait for many a century before the 
first Christian man was possible. Even as Hero of Alex- 
andria dreamed of the steam engine, God must have 
dreamed and waited with infinite patience for the meas- 


100 Now I Know 


ure of co-operation from below that would enable him to 
make a man after the desires of his heart. 


II 


It is clear therefore, that the Christian man’s life is 
a partnership affair. He is not free and unencumbered. 
His Partner’s wishes must be considered. Duty is a 
stern word, rightly so. It points to God, and the interest 
at stake that he has in the Christian man’s life enterprise. 

The old moralists divided the field of duty into three 
spheres, covering severally a man’s direct obligations to 
God, and indirectly to his fellow men and to himself. 
But this division will not stand close analysis, since all 
our obligations are interrelated. If I fail in my direct 
duty to God I fail equally in my duty to myself. Like- 
wise if I fail in my duty to mankind, I fail also in the 
very process in my duty to God and self. Duty is a 
rigid imperative. Though it functions through our na- 
ture, it is rooted in God. Because of the investment he 
has made in us we must find our highest well-being as 
honorable men in honoring his wishes and co-operating 
in his further plans and purposes for us. 

This, however, raises the question—what is his will? 
He has not told it to us in so many words but left it 
largely to us to find as well as to do it. Men equally sin- 
cere differ about it. The world is turned into a vast debat- 
ing society as supporters of various causes and schools of 
thought clamorously insist that they alone know the will 
of God. On first consideration it seems strange that we 
should have been left in the dark. Why are we so con- 
fused? Why is there no clear line between right and 
wrong which can be demonstrated as we demonstrate that 
five times five are twenty-five, or that the three angles of 
a triangle are equal to two right angles; so inevitably 
that there is no further argument? Is it not because there 
would be little virtue in doing right if the right were 
always plain? We are therefore to work out our own sal- 


Wuat Il Know Asovut THE Curistian’s Duty 101 


vation with the help of the divine Spirit working in us. 
Surely the adventure is worth the price, which is the 
danger of going wrong. 


Tif 


Hence it follows that the most elemental of our duties 
is to put time and hard work into learning how to learn 
God’s will. The first men to respond to the call of 
Jesus were disciples, i.e., learners. ‘How can we know 
the way?” was one of the profoundest of their prayers. 
It is no easy task to learn what he would have us do. The 
first requirement is to recognize and admit our ignorance. 
Conceit of knowledge paralyzes the will to effort, and this 
conceit is woven into the very fabric of our being. Our 
opinions seem true and final because they are our own. 
A hostile attitude toward those who disagree with us is 
basic in our nature. Yet we know that we have often been 
wrong in the past. The multitude has often been wrong. 
They forced Socrates to drink the hemlock, crucified 
Jesus and compelled Galileo to deny the truth he had 
discovered. How strange it is that we take so long to 
learn the lesson of humility and tolerance and then forget 
it so soon! 

Because he so clearly recognized this weakness, Jesus 
laid great emphasis on the need of a humble spirit. 

“Blessed are the meek,” but they are few. Most men 
are natural dogmatists. Their minds are closed to an 
honest consideration of such new evidence as may be 
brought to bear upon their set opinions. Thus the lead- 
ers of the church with rare exceptions have opposed every 
reform in history. Fortunately they struggled in vain 
in their effort to retain slavery, to keep woman servile 
and uneducated, to destroy the new truths God revealed 
through Copernicus, Darwin, and other scientists. The 
Christian man’s first duty is to learn the divine mes- 
sage of his age, to understand his times, to desire the will 
of heaven in his relation to the future which is opening 


102 Now I Know 


before him as well as the past which he has inherited. But 
to learn things new and strange he must be ready to admit 
that the truth to which he himself and his pary cling 
is only provisional and partial. This is easily seen by 
us when we stand on the side lines but not when we take 
our place in “our own inner circle.” In a neighboring 
Covenanter church there was almost a riot last Christ- 
mas because one of the Sunday School teachers taught 
the Christmas lesson. The poor woman who thus for- 
got the principles of her sect under the pressure of the 
time spirit was charged with treason in adopting “the 
fringes of popery” by an irate group of her fellow teach- 
ers. But before laughing overmuch at them, we should 
look carefully into our own minds to see whether we are 
qualified to cast the first stone. 

The path of the future leads through a jungle of un- 
settled questions. What is the right attitude toward spir- 
itualism, industrial democracy, free speech, the place of 
woman in the church, birth control, war, divorce, prohi- 
bition, church union, the unmarried mother and her child, 
our relations to belated and beleaguered peoples, and 
many other harassing questions? Their number is legion 
whose attitude toward those problems in this list in which 
they are interested is only an emotional reaction. Their 
voices rise as they recite their opinions dogmatically if 
anyone disagrees with them. ‘The very last thing they 
dream of doing is to assemble all the facts and look on 
every side of a question and reach a judicial conelu- 
sion on that basis. They yield completely to the primitive 
dislike for the new and unfamiliar and seek to discredit 
those who disagree with them by calling them ugly names. 
If a man does not believe in prohibition he is a secret 
toper. If he favors easy divorce he is at heart a liber- 
tine. If he questions the justice of a hysterical persecu- 
tion of the labor agitator he is not a loyal American. No 
argument is needed to show how unchristian is this at- 
titude. Hence our most fundamental duty is to exer- 


Wuat Ll Know Apovr tue Curisti1an’s Duty 103 


cise the eternal vigilance required to approach every dis- 
turbing question with a calm, penetrating and reason- 
ing mind, solely concerned to discover if possible the will 
of God. 

Nor does the traditional reference of all such ques- 
tions to the Bible as the one seat of authority solve the 
problem. The Bible is not a code or aggregation of 
rules to fit every case. It is the record of spiritual prog- 
ress, over a long period of time among certain peo- 
ples, which reveals principles of conduct universal in 
their application. To disengage these principles from 
their local and temporary setting and apply them to the 
present situation is the Christian man’s task. In its ful- 
filment he needs all the resources of a spiritualized rea- 
son. The final revelation has not been given; “I have 
many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
now.” The Christian’s duty is to approach every vex- 
ing question in a humble frame of mind, to divest him- 
self of prejudice and the bias of self-interest. In view of 
the native conceit of our minds, this is an almost super- 
human task, but success at it opens the door to the high- 
est manhood. 


IV 


However, it is not enough to learn to know the will of 
God. Before “thy will, not mine” can be translated into 
terms of our human motive and conduct corresponding 
to itself, we too may have to experience Gethsemane. 
To do God’s will means that men are to keep themselves 
“unspotted from the world.” This is not to be entered 
upon lightly. The world is with us continually. It stands 
for the sum total of ephemeral interests which so often 
crowd out the permanent values. That it does not satisfy 
and never can satisfy the longings of the soul for calm 
does not lessen the weight of its appeal. The illusion 
that money, place and power are the best values that 
life offers, is the hardest thing in the world to expel 


104 Now I Know 


from the human mind. Theoretically men praise ‘spir- 
itual qualities, but only in rare instances do they choose 
them in preference to these grosser prizes. They pray 
formally, “Thy kingdom come,” but their real prayers 
are their inmost desires and these are for prosperity, busi- 
ness success, health, recognition, motor cars and even the 
envy of their fellows. However great their professed 
loyalty to Jesus of Nazareth, when their turn comes to 
make his choice between “the kingdoms of this world” and 
poverty for righteousness’ sake, they may hesitate no 
longer than he, but their decision is the reverse of his. 
They even look upon men who decide against the world, 
like St. Francis, Tolstoi, or Dr. Grenfell, as impractical 
or quixotic. No one need expect much recognition to-day 
from his contemporaries for choosing a course that in- 
volves poverty, however exalted his motive or heroic his 
renunciation. Few will envy him his spiritual rewards 
compared to the mutitudes who will be jealous of the 
success of his neighbor in making a fortune. 

For all that, the deepest instinct of the race has always 
prompted a saving remnant to “see through a glass 
darkly” the supremacy of “holiness without which no 
man shall see the Lord.” A touching scene is described 
in Pater’s Marius the Epicurean, where the mother of 
little Marius who is about to go away to school, her heart 
too full to speak, takes her son to her room and together 
they look out over the Campagna. Then putting her 
hand on his shoulder, she said—‘Marius, a white bird 
which you are to carry across a crowded public place: 
your soul is like that.” Pagan though she was, she knew 
that the most precious possession of her boy was an un- 
tarnished soul and she understood the difficulties he would 
meet in keeping it pure as he passed through the crowds. 
“The idols of the market place,” of which Bacon speaks, 
would bid for his allegiance. ‘To keep out of the toils of 
worldliness while living among those whose only values 
are measured in terms of money subjects men to a cumu- 


Wuat I Know Axsovt tue Curistian’s Duty 105 


lative pressure to conform that only the choicest souls 
can withstand. 

And even more subtle and specious in their appeal are 
“the idols of the theatre,’ with their temptation partic- 
ularly to men of talent or genius to use their powers to 
win popular favor. In every walk of life, and nowhere 
more conspicuously than in the church, success is judged 
by the prominence of the place attained rather than by 
the worth of the service rendered. Unless a man is made 
of the sternest stuff, he is likely to yield to the tempta- 
tion to let down his standards in order to stand in bet- 
ter with the crowd. The popular politician, editor, novel- 
ist and preacher usually keeps his ear to the ground and 
and dresses up his message accordingly. The Chris- 
tian man, however, although he knows that the path of 
duty is lonely, yet does not hesitate to walk in it and 
give up everything to keep his soul “‘unspotted from the 
world.” Universally regarded as one of the greatest 
artists of his time, Tolstoi threw away his art, full well 
knowing that he would be misunderstood by his wife 
and children, his friends and enemies, that he might 
wrestle with his invisible demon and win his battle 
against sham and compromise. The fires of a holy sin- 
cerity burn with incandescent flame in his dignified reply 
to the decree of excommunication issued by the Holy 
Synod: “TI began by loving my orthodox faith more than 
my repose; then I came to love Christianity more than 
my Church; and now I love Truth more than all else 
in the world. And for me Truth still coincides with 
Christianity, and in the measure in which I possess it 
I live calmly and joyously, and calmly and joyously I 
approach death.” 

This is the main highway of spiritual progress. Only 
by a master passion for what is true, lovely and of good 
report can the soul be kept untarnished. Whoever is 
lacking in this passion is not entering upon his full estate 
as a Christian. What a change for the better would take 


106 Now I Know 


place in human society if those who hold the places of 
power and leadership would give their best energy to 
the discovery of what is right and true in every issue 
confronting them! But your man of the world cannot 
rise above ignorance, prejudice and self interest, though 
these are the qualities that corrupt the soul. The only 
way they can be overcome is through the cultivation of 
an acute sense of God that prepares the way for humble 
submission to his will. How stupid and shortsighted we 
are when we doubt or overlook the reality and resourceful- 
ness shown by the divine presence in its inward minis- 
tries! Here in my study I can set up an instrument 
and by a little adjustment I can listen to ships signal- 
ing one another way out at sea as they pass in the night, 
or to beautiful music, or to the human voice in speech or 
story. These sounds travel in some cases for a thousand 
miles before they reach my ear. The roar of the city’s 
traffic does not stifle them. Why is it that I do not hear 
them without the radiophone? The answer is simple. 
They le beyond the threshold of my unaided ear. The 
very air I breathe is saturate with melody. Last night 
I heard the strains of a violin full toned and clear, 
played by a master hand. It seemed to be in an upper 
room of the house as I stood in the hall on the street, 
floor, but in reality it was a hundred miles away. Only 
recently have I learned of the existence of these un- 
heard melodies afloat in the air around me, though the 
poet must have guessed them, or he could never have 
spoken of “the morning stars singing together.” 

If it be true that a world of wonder les just beyond the 
boundaries of my physical senses, a world into which I 
can penetrate if I am willing to take some simple pains, 
surely it should not strain my faith to believe in the pres- 
ence within my grasp of him who made the world. And 
since God is the supreme reality, it is the part of wisdom 
to enter into such intimate relations with him by prayer, 
communion, meditation upon his purposes and every other 


Wuat | Know Azpovut THE Curistian’s Duty 10% 


means, that my life will become tinctured with his life, 
as a drop of water is tinctured with the nature of the 
ocean. Such is the price the Christian man must pay 
for the greatest prize that life offers, a pure soul. For it 
unites him with all the great spirits of the ages, the secret 
of whose power in every case is that by enduring “as 
seeing him who is invisible,” their faithfulness kept their 
souls white. 


Vv 


Character is never fully formed except in action. 
There is still another imperative which pushes the Chris- 
tian on. He has a definite task apart from the assimila- 
tion of those personal graces and virtues which enter 
into the making of a pure and upright soul. The ulti- 
mate purpose of his existence is to build up the kingdom 
of God on earth. Beyond the home and the nation, 
though including them both, his theatre of action extends. 
Personal purity is not enough. ‘Patriotism is not 
enough,” as Edith Cavell said in that luminous moment 
when, on the edge of the grave, she saw reality in clearer 
outline than ever before. 

Too long men have divorced religion from great areas 
covered by the practical interests of life. The virtues of 
the Christian must be incorporated in business, polities, 
industry and international and inter-racial relations be- 
fore the prayer for the coming of that kingdom is ful- 
filled. In popular thought this program is considered 
a mere dream. Most people, whatever they profess to 
think Christian service is, narrow it in practice to such 
things as going to church, or working in the church, 
whereas it covers every phase of their existence. In 
doing one’s work faithfully, whatever it may be and how- 
ever humble, the motive that glorifies the common task 
is the doing of it so as to further the Kingdom of God. 
The new earth of which the poet-apostle had a vision 
will never be realized until men by the aid of God’s 


108 Now I Know 


grace give themselves whole-heartedly to its making. This 
can not be accomplished until their thought switches its 
center of gravity from themselves to the common welfare. 
To many this seems a far off divine event—too distant, 
indeed for us to bother about. Selfishness is to them a 
permanent part of the tissue of life. Yet there have always 
been and still are noble souls who realize this ideal. They 
find it to be the secret of happiness. They know “the way” 
and by their spirit and example act as its signboard to their 
fellows. 

Even the average man possesses a latent idealism which 
sometimes flares up into action. When his country 1is 
menaced by the warlike aggression of another nation, he 
is quick to offer himself in its defence. For some reason, 
patriotism is a much less potent motive in peace than 
in strife. It is strange that men who are ready to die 
for their country are not ready to work for their coun- 
try by striving for better schools, a more intelligent 
government, the care of the widows and orphans, the 
emancipation of the wunder-privileged, good housing, 
clean streets, playgrounds, missions and all other agen- 
cies which further the common good. ‘These things are 
not all there is to the Kingdom of God, but they are a 
part of its framework, and in so far as a man is a Chris- 
tian he will be interested in them and willing to make 
whatever sacrifice he can to further them. And while 
none can spread his own contribution over many such en- 
terprises to advantage, a sympathetic interest in every 
good work is a definite duty of the Christian. That in- 
terest creates an atmosphere in which all forms of right- 
eous action in common thrive and flourish. As long 
as men remain parochial in their outlook and think only 
of their own church, city or nation, they are failing in 
their duty to the Kingdom of God, which embraces every 
race and reaches out for the universal good. Since the 
purpose of God in the making of a Christian is to have 
a partner and an ally in establishing the universal rule of 


Wuat I Know Asovrt THE Curistian’s Duty 109 


love, unless the Christian is working toward this end he 
is failing in his supreme duty. Though his words have 
a militant ring, William Blake spoke for every faithful 
follower of Christ when he cried in exultant fervor: 


Bring me my bow of burning gold! 
Bring me my arrows of desire! 

Bring me my spear: O clouds, unfold! 
Bring me my chariot of fire! 


I will not cease from mental fight, 

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, 
Till we have built Jerusalem 

In England’s green and pleasant land. 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT THE CHRISTIAN’S 
REWARD 


43 


We have seen that the Christian is faced with many 
duties and that he heartily accepts them in all their ex- 
actingness. He is not his own and is not free in the sense 
that he can choose his course of action according to his 
personal tastes. The heavenly vision of human life as 
a partnership with God which is his pillar of cloud by 
day and of fire by night, often leads him over rough 
roads. It is therefore both natural and right that we ask 
what benefits will accrue to him for the service that he 
renders to the spiritual commonwealth known as the King- 
dom of God. Of course, virtue above anything else 
must be disinterested. If it seeks its own profit directly, 
its very nature is destroyed. Yet it is equally true that 
deep in our hearts there is a confidence that in the end 
virtue is recognized and rewarded. Though from our 
side the service of God is its own reward, that is only 
one-half of the transaction. Human relationships are re- 
ciprocal in the obligations they involve, and this must 
also be true of the relations between God and his chil- 
dren. He has not made them to be his bondservants. If 
they are partners with him in a common enterprise, 
therefore they will share with him the good that rises 
from their mutual labors. 


II 


At the outset, it is well to recognize that the reward of 
the Christian is not material in its nature. That a man 
however faithful to duty will become rich or powerful, 
is no doctrine of the New Testament, nor is there any 

110 


Wuat I Know Apout THE CuristiaAn’s Rewarp 111 


basis for it in subsequent experience. ‘The Psalmist was 
unduly optimistic when he affirmed that he had neither 
seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread. 
He was speaking from too narrow a circuit of experi- 
ence to make his observation of much value from a more 
inclusive one. “Prosperity,’ as Bacon said, “is the 
blessing of the Old Testament. Adversity is the Blessing 
of the New; which carrieth the greater Benediction and 
the Clearer Revelation of God’s Favour.” Yet the Old 
Testament offers many instances of heroic devotion to 
duty resulting in poverty or death. Elhjah, Isaiah, 
Hosea and Jeremiah would doubtless all have been more 
prosperous if they had been men of worldly mind and 
left the business of reform to others. 

But when we reach the New Testament, there is no 
room for debate. The gospel promises neither wealth 
nor security, at least prior to the time when all men 
have come under its rule. Persecution, arrest, slander, 
hate, prison and a cross are definitely assured to the 
faithful. Jesus never glossed over the difficulties in 
calling men to be his disciples. He did not tell them that 
it pays in houses and lands, in place and power to follow 
him. The benefits promised are spiritual in their content. 


The mind is its own place, and in itself, 
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 


Blessedness, fulness of joy and salvation are the fruits 
of Christian service. To many these values sound good 
and they would like to have them—added unto them. 
But what they seek first are comforts and luxuries, 
place and distinction. They do not possess the depth of 
insight necessary to act in accord with a conviction that 
these things do not yield a permanent satisfaction. In- 
stead they depend upon them for happiness. The myths 
of Tantalus and Sisyphus show that the ancient pagans 
realized that happiness can never be quite captured by 
a frontal attack. Tantalus, half dead with thirst, stands 
ina pool, but always as he bows his head to drink 


112 Now I Know 


his fill of the waters of happiness, they recede leaving the 
ground at his feet dry. ‘Trees heavy with luscious fruit 
bow toward him, but as he tries to clutch the apples and 
figs the winds sweep them from his reach. Sisyphus is 
doomed to roll a stone up to the top of a hill, but always 
as he seems about to attain his goal, repulsed by some sud- 
den force, it rolls again to the plain below, and he begins 
his task anew. Such is the punishment that comes to all 
who seek first their own comfort and well-being. Hap- 
pily, the Christian understands that his peace of mind 
does not arise from nor depend upon his material posses- 
sions, if he has them. If he is poor in worldly goods, as is 
most likely to be the case, he does not envy those who 
are rich. 


III 


The prophet Isaiah uses a stirring phrase—‘‘His re- 
ward is with him, and his work before him,” which is 
well adapted to set forth, as in a parable, the principle of 
the Christian’s compensation. He carries his reward in 
his soul. It is thus as living and mysterious as the life 
that assimilates it. One of the deepest joys of life is a 
sense of added capacity. To know that somehow I am 
equal to responsibilities which I would not even under- 
take a few years ago, compensates for many a disappoint- 
ment and temporary failure in between. When it comes, 
the assurance that he has made progress compensates the 
musician for the hard toil by which he built up his tech- 
nique, the writer for his failures as he strove to formulate 
his message, the scientist for the set-backs he suffered in 
gathering his facts in support of the speculation which 
he hoped would prove a discovery. ‘‘Ye shall receive 
power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you,” was 
an assurance which sustained the apostles in their early 
efforts. It enabled them to remain steadfast in support- 
ing what often in those first years must have seemed to 
the most sanguine to be a lost cause. The sense of added 


Wuat | Know Apout THE CuHristTiAn’s Rewarp 113 


capacity nerved them to press on again and again in the 
face of new difficulties otherwise insuperable. [very 
time their horizons widened, their confidence in their 
ultimate success increased. This is true of every great 
spiritual adventure. Columbus could never have endured 
his long journey into the unknown were it not for the 
access of capacity added unto him as compensation for 
his unfaltering faith that sooner or later he would reach 
land on the opposite side of the ocean. An increase of 
calibre is an infallible proof that life is triumphing over 
death. It assures the Christian that his soul is winning 
its struggle against all the malign forces that threaten it 
with decay. That knowledge fills him with joyful hope, 
and renders him immune to every depressing influence. 


LV, 


Growth of soul is, however, only the first installment 
of the Christian’s reward. A second benefit which is even 
more satisfying is that peace or repose of spirit which 
is always a mark of the mature follower of Christ. This 
peace is difficult to define, as it has many counterfeits, 
most of which arise from a refusal to face the harder 
duties of discipleship. When men airily tell us to smile, 
to be optimists by turning our backs upon the realities of 
hfe and living in a fool’s paradise, the peace they offer 
is a delusion. It is blindly cruel to urge a mother who 
has lost her child to be happy, unless we can ground her 
in the conviction that he still lives and one day they 
will meet again in a complete restoration of the broken 
relationship. It is both stupid and criminal to advise 
men to look only on the bright side of things and to 
close their eyes to the evil forces which are undermining 
and blighting the life of the community. The peace 
which accompanies this attitude of mind is spurious. 

Nor is the Christian’s peace fatalistic. A dumb resig- 
nation which accepts fate without complaint does not de- 
velop character. Bovine placidity is not a virtue. The 


114 Now I Know 


iron temper of Henley’s ringing defiance of evil, though 
splendid, also falls short of the Christian standard: 


In the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not winced nor cried aloud. 

Under the bludgeonings of chance 
My head is bloody but unbowed. 


There is no note of defiance in the peace of the Chris- 
tian. His is an easy mastery over the sinister forces 
which strive for his undoing. He is always sure of him- 
self as he fights against them. His peace is due to the 
equilibrium of his soul which arises from his harmony 
with God. He faces the future with equanimity, un- 
disturbed in the face of danger and never in fear of 
evil tidings. Because his heart is anchored in God he is 
certain that no lasting evil can befall him. He is content 
to leave the result when he has done his best with God, 
and does not waste his powers in fret and worry. God 
is his refuge and strength, and so real a help in trouble 
that he neither fears for his own welfare nor for that of 
the Kingdom. There is a quiet confidence in his bear- 
ing produced by his certainty that in the end all will be 
well. He lives above the petty disasters which mar so 
many lives, the jealousies and conflicting interests and 
self-seeking which poison the springs of happiness and 
destroy friendship. He is free from strain because 
he trusts in God. He knows the inner meaning of the 
words, ““My peace I give unto you. Let not your heart 
be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” 

The Christian man’s peace is thus an active and not 
a passive experience. It gives the broad margin to life 
which Thoreau said he loved. In these surroundings, 
the soul becomes aware of the reality and presence of the 
Eternal. The ordinary passions and interests of exist- 
ence shrink to their true minor proportions. Little dan- 
ger remains of overemphasizing those things which are of 
only temporary value. Time is seen to be the overture 
to eternity. The Christian, untroubled by frets and vain 


Wuat I Know Asovr tue Creistian’s Rewarp 115 


ambitions, increases both in tranquillity and in his hold 
upon the future, by developing those melodies in the 
theme which will reach their climax only in “the city with 
foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” The 
fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gen- 
tleness, goodness, faith, meekness, tempcrance, thus be- 
come an immediate experience, a future promise and a 
certain hope. 


V 


This assurance that the Christian man’s reward in the 
form of ever added increments of capacity will find un- 
limited opportunities for wholesome exercise in the long 
future constitutes another installment in the return made 
to him for meeting the rigorous demands made upon him 
by his partnership relations with God. We recoil less 
from the thought of death than from the thought of ex- 
tinction. Personality carries in its heart a sense of the 
sacredness and glory and permanence of life. While 
there are many suggestions in this fleeting world that 
death ends everything, the mind of man refuses to ac- 
cept such a conclusion. The skeptic may build up an 
argument, which we are unable to answer, but we refuse 
to be convinced. Still we reach lame hands of faith to- 
ward the God who made us, and like infants erying in 
the night ask for some sign to confirm our blind faith 
that when we die we shall live again. It is pathetic 
testimony to the strength of this hunger to see men other- 
wise intelligent trusting to the professed revelations of 
some ignorant and neurotic woman who claims to be an 
intermediary between the two worlds. Even in this de- 
pendence, however, upon messages of trival content, men 
show their eagerness to bridge the gulf between time and 
eternity. The longing for the touch of a vanished hand 
and the sound of a voice that is still prompts them to 
magnify trifles in the way of evidence until they take on 
the appearance of decisive proof. Who dare be sure 


116 Now I Know 


that they are always and altogether wrong? To Noah a 
single olive leaf was sufficient evidence that the flood was 
receding, though doubtless the majority of his fellow 
passengers in the ark disagreed with his optimistic con- 
clusions. To Columbus, floating seaweed indicated the 
proximity of land, but his sailors doubted his sanity. 
After scorning the alchemists for generations, scientists 
now admit that their dream of the transmutation of baser 
into more valuable elements is within range of possible 
achievement. At any rate, the reverse process is an accom- 
plished fact, for as the radium atom continues to explode 
other lower elements and ultimately lead appear as the 
results of this disintegration. Alchemy was a kind of 
crude and illiterate chemistry and it may very well be 
the part of wisdom to keep an open mind toward the pres- 
ent crude and illiterate stage of spiritualism. There is 
no reason why the Christian man should decry the at- 
tempt to demonstrate that intercourse is possible between 
members of the church militant and the church trium- 
phant. <A multitude of stricken souls would be born 
again from despair to hope and happiness, if they were 
convinced of no more than that their loved ones beyond 
the grave are still interested in them and living as real a 
life as when they were on the earth. To have an oc- 
casional word, however commonplace, from those they 
loved and lost would brighten their whole existence. The 
Christian man should look with sympathy upon every 
honest effort to cross this abyss, while he exercises the 
strictest caution against becoming the dupe of those 
who do not scruple to exploit one of the most sacred 
and fundamental of human desires. 

Nor is the argument convincing that if God wanted 
us to communicate with our deceased friends, or to have 
immediate proof of their survival, he would have related 
the two worlds in such a way that this would be as natural 
and habitual as eating and sleeping. The romance of 
man’s achievement consists in one after another long 


Wuat Ll Know Axpovut THE CuristiAn’s Rewarp 11% 


and successful struggle to uncover secrets of nature hid- 
den from him. God has given us seeking minds and 
placed before us problems for us to try to discover a 
multitude of his secrets for ourselves. This is much more 
interesting than if he solved them for us. Who could 
have anticipated the telegraph or telephone before Frank- 
lin “snatched the thunderbolt from heaven’, as Turgot 
said? Was it wrong for Morse, Faraday, Marconi and 
Edison to unlock doors shut from the beginning of the 
world until they opened them? To ask this question is 
to answer it. Meyer, Hyslop, Flammarion and Doyle 
have an equal right to open the door into the hereafter 
if they can. Man will never discover anything at discord 
with God’s purposes for his life. So, it is foolish for 
him to set any limits for his efforts of research. If the 
day ever arrives when we can speak freely with the resi- 
dents of the Eternal City, it will be due to our having 
earned the right by our discovery of the means and 
conditions, even as we have paid the same price for 
traveling through the air. 

This discussion is, however, incidental. The Christian 
man’s reward is a conviction which nothing can shake, 
that in so far as he is Christian he is practising immor- 
tality now. The usual approach to the problem as to 
whether we shall live on hereafter is set forth in the 
classic question, “If a man die shall he live again?” 
That removes its settlement, however, to a later time and 
renders it debatable and academic. With the Christian 
eternal life is a matter of immediate experience. “This 
day is salvation come to this house.” “This is life eter- 
nal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” ‘We know that 
we have passed from death unto life, because we love the 
brethren.” — 

The ground of this assurance to the Christian man is 
the added increments of capacity: the more abundant 
life, which has already been realized in his experience, 


118 Now I Know 


is the form of the Christian’s reward. ‘We brought noth- 
ing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing 
out.” This, however, does not mean that we go out as 
we came in. Our qualities of mind and heart, our varied 
experiences, our knowledge, our faith, our love, our 
vision, our integrity—in short, all that makes up per- 
sonality, our character in itself, will constitute the cap- 
ital with which we begin our life beyond the grave. If 
a man has these possessions of the spirit, the Christian 
is confident that death does not take them from him nor 
impair their growth. But he does not possess them if 
his first thought has been money, place, or pleasure. 
These values are temporary. They have no carrying 
power to cross the grave. They yield to the downward 
pull of earth. They are liable to be destroyed at any 
time by change of circumstance. The germs of decay 
in them are inescapable. This is what St. Paul means 
when he says—‘‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the king- 
dom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorrup- 
tion.”’ 

How different it is with spiritual qualities! Though 
Socrates lived ages ago, he kindles the love of truth yet 
in multitudes in each generation. The bright stars in 
the racial firmament whose names are centers and sources 
of inspiration are almost without exception loved and 
remembered because of the fruit of their minds and 
souls. Who cares a pulse beat for Croesus, and who is 
so ignorant as not to have his heart leap faster when 
he hears the name of Plato, or Dante, or Calvin or 
Luther? They quicken our nobler affections. This im- 
mortality of spiritual influence in the present world is 
a faint reflection of their own survival. These men must 
be living, or their memory would not be dynamic. 

The supreme example of this principle is Jesus. His 
empire grows wider with each passing year. He with- 
stands every test of critical analysis. ‘The white light 
of a myriad of investigating minds is constantly focused 


Wurat | Know Asovur THE Curistian’s Rewarp 119 


upon him, but ever as it increases in intensity he stands 
out more majestically. It is significant that in our day 
the exponents of Hinduism, Mohammedanism and other 
non-Christian faiths are striving to square their teaching 
with him. They see that in this path lies their only hope. 
The secret of his marvelous influence, so much greater 
since his going than during his stay, is easily discovered. 
The grave could not hold him. Death had no dominion 
over his personality. The conviction that he still lived 
took hold of his disciples, and as carbon in molten iron 
transforms it into steel, this conviction changed them 
from men of flabby courage and mediocre talent into 
heroic world figures. Only a living Christ could have 
wrought that amazing transformation. With hearts 
aflame they went out and told the story, and many 
believed. In three centuries they had achieved the 
impossible. Christianity became the official religion of 
the Roman Empire. The Galilean had conquered, be- 
cause he was alive, always guiding and inspiring his 
disciples and nerving them to high adventure. Spirit 
is immeasurably stronger than matter. Sincerity, truth, 
sympathy and love overthrow the vast and apparently 
unconquerable forces of wealth and power which are 
arrayed against them. 

There are many arguments, some of which are richly 
suggestive, that may be advanced to support the doctrine 
of immortality, but they sink into minor importance over 
against the rule of the living Christ. If matter is inde- 
structible it imposes no strain upon our faith to believe 
mind equally indestructible. If the seed dies to live in 
fairer form, why may not I die to emerge as the moth 
from the chrysalis, in a wider world, where the faint 
promises of earth will be adequately realized? The heart 
of man in every age has longed for eternal life. Surely 
it is reasonable to believe that God would never have 
endued us with this yearning if it is doomed to remain 
unsatisfied. In that case it would have no ground of 


AY Now I Know 


justification, and man would be the idle plaything of a 
malicious fate, the victim of a ghastly mistake. 

As the lamps of a city, however, fade out before the 
rising sun, these and other reasons which we assemble 
to support our hopes of immortality pale in the light 
which flows from the Eternal Christ. The Christian man 
knows that he shall live hereafter, because he is living 
now, and he knows that he is living now because his 
awakened soul has thrown off the grave clothes of igno- 
rance, superstition, fear and sin, proving to him that 
immortality is far less a matter of duration than of 
spiritual vitality. Having “risen with Christ,” he seeks 
those things which are above, and immortality is no longer 
a matter of speculation, but a present experience. 


VI 


Nor is this all of the Christian man’s reward. There 
is still another installment due him for his faithfulness. 
“His work is before him.” Our fathers used to talk of 
“ooing to heaven,” as we talk of going to London or 
Paris. They thought of heaven as a place of inactivity, 
where the weary find solace in unending rest. But a 
static existence, even though it be in heaven, no longer 
appeals to the thoughtful mind, for it has no support 
in reason. Whatever form our future hfe may take, it 
will continue on a higher plane the process already begun 
of rewarding fidelity with increase of calibre. When 
we come to ourselves after we have crossed “the great 
divide,” we shall find ourselves largely what we were 
before, as the student who begins his college course is 
the same youth who left high school a few months pre- 
viously, translated into a wider environment. And as 
tasks and problems are essential here to the development 
of character, so will they be essential there. Life with- 
out work would be sterile and without zest. In that 
unending process of development which opens so allur- 
ingly before the man who has proved the immortality 


Wuat I Know Asout tue Curistran’s Rewarp 121 


of his own soul, the joy of service will be a constant 
factor, Into a wider stream of effort all his former striv- 
ings will flow and find their justification and meaning. 
His delight will be in going on to new and stiffer tasks. 
If the end could ever be reached, ennui would paralyze 
the soul, It is far better that each advance provide a 
starting point for further achievement. The climax of 
the Christian man’s reward lies in the new fields for 
cooperation with God which are continually opening 
before him in response to the push of his growing soul. 
He desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, 


To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky: 
Give him the wages of going on, and not to die. 


*Tennyson. Wages (adapted). 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT PRAYER 


I 


We have already taken the position that the only 
rational and satisfying foundation which we can put 
beneath the structure of our thought about ourselves and 
the world, is a belief in God. We have also adopted the 
position that God is the Father, and that his qualities 
of mind and heart have, in some degree, been transmitted 
to us as his children. Hence it follows that intercourse 
with him is within the scope of our powers however 
limited they may be in comparison. This intercourse is 
called prayer. Jeremy Taylor was wise in describing 
prayer as “the ascent of the mind to God.” It is the 
meeting of man’s spirit with his on a common ground of 
sympathy and understanding. 

While prayer depends upon kindred purposes and a 
definite relationship between the two personalities in- 
volved, it also implies sovereignty on the one side and 
weakness upon the other. No being can pray to his 
equal. Man, in his need, turns to God because God is 
as powerful as man is puny. He has no other source 
of help when destiny sweeps him from his moorings and 
forces him to realize how weak and frail he is. Sooner 
or later, this: sense of helplessness is the experience of 
all men. Even the strongest and most self-reliant have 
their periods of depression in which they become acutely 
conscious of their lack of adequate resources against the 
encroachments of pain, age and death. 

Then the soul cries out for relief. Prayer is older 
than history and co-extensive with human life. All men 
pray, even those who never do so formally, and, therefore, 

122 


Wuat I Know Azsovur PRAYER abe 


assume that they never pray at all. Prayer is thus a 
common thread which runs through the substratum of our 
lives, uniting us with the bushman of Australia who cries 
blindly to his divinity for revenge, and with the Moham- 
medan, who five times a day kneels with his face toward 
Mecea. 


II 


Prayer has in the course of time, like a mountain 
stream, worn out for itself certain channels of expression. 
The first is adoration, the recognition of God as living, 
personal, holy and supreme. The Psalms are preémi- 
nently the literature of adoration. “Bless the Lord, O 
my soul and all that is within me, bless his holy name” : 
“The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep 
silence before him”; ‘Lord, thou hast been our dwelling 
place in all generations”; “Clouds and darkness are round 
about him; righteousness and judgment are the founda- 
tion of his throne.”” Back of these sublime utterances, 
there is awe-struck recognition of the infinitude of the 
power that made the universe. They point to mingled feel- 
ings of mystery, wonder and awe in the presence of such 
majesty and glory. Never far away, also, is a sense of 
self-abasement at the contrasts of our own littleness with 
the transcendent majesty of the Creator. Instinctively 
the soul as it bows in reverence before such power, passes 
by a logical transition, to the striking moral difference 
between the divine righteousness and wisdom and its own 
spiritual poverty. ‘‘Woe is me! for I am undone; because 
I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a 
people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, 
the Lord of Hosts.” Only in the recognition of the moral 
splendor of God do the streams of true prayer take their 
rise and attain the initial momentum required for the 
more intimate blessings which it offers. I know something 
of prayer because in its highest moods my soul thrills with 
adoration. 


124 Now I Know 


ITT 


A second channel or outlet for prayer is thanksgiving. 
We are the constant recipients of God’s favor. In fact 
we are dependent upon his grace, his free outpouring 
of himself for every blessing we have. He has given 
us life and hope and promise of richer joys to come. Our 
mental outlook, our spiritual experience, our sense of 
worth, our growth in character, our homes, friends and 
loved ones, are all due to him. A momentary withdrawal 
of aid on his part would result in immediate disaster to us. 
Our present and future welfare are entirely dependent 
upon him. Prayer overflows in thanks and appreciation 
of his gracious kindness towards us. It is strange how 
any man can take these blessings as a matter of course and 
give no evidence in thought or action that he is conscious 
of any indebtedness to him. In our human relations, in- 
gratitude is rightly considered a despicable trait. To 
accept benefits conferred as our right, overlooks our obh- 
gations to our parents and teachers and other benefactors. 
“Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as 
man’s ingratitude” is a hard but true indictment of our 
unregenerate human nature. 


Avi 


Confession is a third channel or outlet for prayer. 
“Create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right 
spirit within me”; “Forgive us our debts’; “God be 
merciful to me, a sinner.” These penitential cries evoke 
a universal response. They express the sense of discord 
which is felt within by the normal mind. Regardless 
of the theory of human nature which he holds, every 
man knows that he has sinned and that he is prone to 
evil. Only those afflicted with mental shortsightedness 
believe that they are either free from sin or can become 
free in this world. Some few boast of “the victorious 
life,” meaning the attainment of a state of perfection, 
but that is manifestly impossible. The great heroes of 


Wuat I Know Azsout PRAYER 125 


the faith never believed that they had reached the end 
of the gospel trail. On the contrary, a deep sense of 
humility characterizes them and their self-appraisal. St. 
Paul regarded himself as the chief of sinners. Dr. 
Alexander Whyte, a modern saint, was wont to describe 
himself in terms so dark that we would feel them exag- 
gerated if applied to the worst criminal in Edinburgh, 
the city of his splendid ministry. 

It is a sure mark of spiritual immaturity for any one 
to claim that he has done his full duty. Sometimes we 
hear a man calling attention to how kind he was or 
generous in a given situation and we always discount his 
words for we know instinctively that virtue loses its bloom 
the moment it becomes self-conscious. Particularly is it 
true that in the presence of God, the substantial soul 
becomes aware of its defects and is prompted to cry out 
for forgiveness. I know something of prayer because 
I am often in the valley of humiliation and as I recall 
“the petty done, the undone vast,” I echo the despairing 
words of St. Peter,—‘‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful 
man, O Lord.” 


Vv 


A fourth channel or outlet for prayer is meditation. 
While we can have meditation without prayer, we cannot 
have true prayer without meditation. When Jesus went 
apart into the silent places to hold communion with his 
Father, doubtless he prepared himself by meditation for 
that free and intimate intercourse with God which marked 
his life and so largely explains his power. During his 
earthly ministry, his strength was under a constant and 
heavy tax, yet we have no record of his ever being ill 
or suffering from nerves. The explanation hes, at least 
in part, in the fact that he never drew too closely upon 
his margin of reserve force. When it began to run low, 
he went to a place remote from men to ponder upon deep 
and eternal things. And just as a cistern is filled after 


126 Now I Know 


a drouth by the falling showers, so the heavenly dew of 
God’s favour filled the dry places, freshened his half- 
wearied soul and gently bore him into the presence of 
God. Then with recreated strength, he went forth again 
to tasks impossible apart from contact with this inex- 
haustible supply of power. 

Our western civilization needs to learn the alphabet 
of the art of slowing down into meditation. Speed has 
become a mania with us. We are always in a hurry. 
We do not know how to be quiet. Our pace maker is 
the whirring machine, the Iron God. People think there 
is something wrong with us, if we are not keeping up 
with the hurrying throngs composed of fevered souls who 
do not know why they are in a rush. Our nerves are 
in a constant turmoil. We are so busy that we have 
no time left to spend in the company of the supreme 
interests of life. The crowded columns of the daily paper 
constitute the bulk of our reading. What we must remem- 
ber is that without meditation, prayer degenerates into 
an occasional emergency 8. O. 8. No one who is out 
of breath can commune with God. If we have no time 
for him, we will not let him have any time with us. 
Equilibrium of soul is essential to our approach to the 
throne of grace. That alone gives the steadiness of vision 
which we require to see his purpose. I know something 
of prayer because through meditation I have been privi- 
leged to enter my Father’s presence. 


VI 


Still another channel or outlet for prayer is interces- 
sion. Speaking broadly, this means entreaty for others. 
Every devout mind is perturbed in some degree by the 
world’s deep need and this concern finds expression in 
appeals to God to bestow the blessings necessary to meet 
this need. At bottom, intercession is firmly based upon 
the doctrine of human solidarity. We pray for others 


Wuat I Know Azsoutr PRAYER i yi 


because we recognize in them our own kin, children of 
the same Father and therefore our brothers. Our hearts 
go out to them in their pain, ignorance, superstition and 
sin and in our sympathy we ask God to open a way out 
for them from their darkness. Because we are vitally 
interested in the growth of righteousness, peace and good- 
will, we are prompted to pray that these blessings may 
be established in the hearts of our neighbors, in the life 
of our nation and over the world. For the same reason 
we ask that the day may be hastened when those who 
have had no experience of the meaning and redemptive 
power of the gospel, may enjoy its uplifting and creative 
influence in their lives. 

Both the Old Testament and the New contain many 
examples of intercessory prayer. Once in the lifetime 
of every priest, it was his most exalted privilege to enter 
the holy place as an intercessor in behalf of the people. 
The supreme function of the high priest’s office was to 
enter the Holy of Holies once a year and, after making 
atonement for his own sins, to act as the people’s repre- 
sentative in their access to God. 

The idea of intercession is also dominant in the teach- 
ing and example of Jesus. In the “Our Father” of the 
Lord’s Prayer, brotherhood is clearly implied as well 
as in the petition, “Thy kingdom come.” Even in his 
prayer for his disciples on the evening of his departure, 
it is a reasonable inference that those whom the disciples 
would turn into paths of righteousness were equally in 
the forefront of his thought. This inference is confirmed 
by his command that his followers are to pray for those 
who use them despitefully and by his own intercession 
for his enemies in his almost dying breath, “Father, for- 
give them; for they know not what they do.” I know 
something of prayer, because my heart goes out to others 

in their distress, and my instinctive cry to God is to bless 
and sustain them in their extremity. 


128 Now I Know 


Vil 


The last channel or outlet for prayer that I shall 
mention is petition which is popularly regarded as con- 
stituting all there is of prayer. In truth it is a com- 
paratively small part of it. When the soul is in full 
communion with God, the last thing usually emphasized 
by us is our own immediate needs. This is illustrated 
in our relations with our friends. We hesitate to ask 
favors of those with whom we are on intimate terms 
excepting when our need is urgent. This is due to a 
sure instinct which recoils from exploiting those whom 
we love. If a friend were elected President, I would 
not hurry to him to ask a personal favor. When Ik 
Marvel, the author of “Reveries of a Bachelor’ and 
“Dream Life,” was in serious financial straits and be- 
lieved that he would have to sell his beautiful home, 
Edgewood, near New Haven, friends offered to help him 
but he refused. Unless it was unavoidable, he could not 
bring himself to denature his friendship by the least sus- 
picion of trafficking in it. 

In the attitude of the highly sensitive soul toward God, 
something of the same restraint appears. This does not 
mean that we should hesitate to ask him for material 
help or that he disregards our personal needs, since we 
are to pray for our daily bread. Rather we should 
remember that our communion with him yields many 
blessings of an immeasurably higher type than material 
benefits. I value my friend for his affection, sympathy 
and appreciation of my personality far more than for 
the help that he can give me when I am in distress, 
though I know that such help will be gladly given if I 
ask for it. 

In like manner, I value my intereourse with God pri- 
marily because of the vision, faith, blessedness and inspir- 
ation it yields. When these gifts are used aright, they 
go a long way toward fitting me to meet and conquer 
any change of circumstances. True, disasters often come 


Wuat I Know Asoutr PRAYER 129 


out of situations beyond our control bringing pain and 
danger, and it is a joy to know that I can turn to God 
with the same confidence that a child turns to his father 
when in trouble. “If ye then, being evil, know how to 
give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall 
your Father which is in heaven give good things to them 
that ask him ?” 

Nevertheless, we should never forget that it is impos- 
sible for us to understand the divine methods and pur- 
poses fully. Our Lord in his extremity prayed that the 
cup of sorrow might pass from him. Yet he added 
significantly, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou 
wilt.”” This restrictive clause should be a part of every 
petition for a personal benefit. If the Father could not 
grant every prayer of Jesus, it is not surprising that 
he may be unable to grant one of ours. Nor can we 
be certain as to what is best even for our immediate 
selves to say nothing of the larger purposes to which 
our lives must be adapted. These considerations do not 
mean that we should hesitate to express our longings, 
however, but that we should not be disgruntled if the 
answer be not in the terms of our desire. Jor every 
true prayer is answered when it finds its way home to 
God’s heart of infinite love: this is known by the strength 
which the answering response of his presence quickens in 
the soul of the petitioner. 

Thus the books that are written from time to time on 
the theme “Does God Answer Prayer?” are superfluous 
or even worse, for they approach the question from the 
wrong point of view. If we appeal to Cesar, to Cesar 
we must go. If we base our argument in favor of 
prayer upon apparent specific answers to prayers for 
particular blessings, we open the door to the skeptic 
to counter by formulating as formidable a list as 
he can of cases in which there was no apparent re- 
sponse. This method lets the issue down to too low 
a plane. When we remember the essential attributes of 


130 Now I Know 


prayer, we cannot be diverted by futile controversies as 
to whether the petition portion of prayer is answered or 
not. Through our intercourse with God, we have settled 
the whole question of prayer finally. As a result of 
knowledge born of our lving experience, we can say 
with Tennyson, whether our requests for particular favors 
are granted or not, that “somehow good will be the final 
goal of ill,’ even of our own personal pains and mis- 
fortunes. J know something of prayer because though 
IT am often denied the particular boon for which I yearn, 
IT am confident that my Father sympathizes with me and 
understands and answers me in his own way for my 
highest good. 


VIII 


It is, however, one thing to know what prayer is and 
quite another to be able to pray. or prayer is an art 
as the disciples understood when they said, “Lord, teach 
us to pray.” Prayer can no more be achieved incidentally 
than great music or literature. If a man has neglected 
to pray for years, his intercourse with God will be spare 
and halting until he masters the art of communion. 
Strange as it may sound, when first stated, only an ath- 
lete in concentration can go very far in prayer. One 
might as reasonably hope to play a musical instrument 
without training or speak a new language as to pray 
effectively without previous discipline. Hence we need 
constant exercise in the absorption of prayer. Spasmodic 
and panicky efforts to communicate with God in hours 
of severe trial or urgent need will not avail. A rich and 
mature religious experience previously attained through 
the habit of frequent and sustained intercourse with God 
is indispensable. Friendship with him is not essentially 
different from friendship in our human relations. We 
cannot speak to a stranger with the easy intimacy which 
marks our conversation with our friends. It takes time 
to break down the barriers of restraint and make us feel 


Wuat I Know Axzsovut PRAYER 131 


at ease in one another’s presence. The sense of being 
“at home” with God is equally necessary and much more 
difficult to gain. Yet it must be achieved before we can 
have the calm and assurance which are the fruit of inti- 
mate converse with him. 

There is, however, no other exercise or discipline in 
which we can engage that turns out so intensely satis- 
factory. Prayer makes the small man large and trans- 
forms the strong man into a giant. If the general run 
of people only understood how much they are missing in 
neglecting the art of prayer, an immediate revolution 
would take place in their habits. What exercise is to 
the body, prayer is to the soul. It cleanses and invigor- 
ates the spirit. It opens doors into the infinite and in 
its light simple experiences expose eternal values. It 
releases hidden powers and harnesses the mind to exalted 
purposes. It enlarges the vision by pushing back the 
boundaries of time and sense until earth fades into 
heaven. It is an almost certain protection against the 
pull of temptation. The man who prays steadfastly not 
only gets more strength out of himself than he otherwise 
would, but in addition, his contact with God puts him 
in touch with inexhaustible stores of power. 

We sometimes wonder how a certain few men obtained 
the unique strength by which they overcame apparently 
insuperable obstacles. How was it that St. Paul, Luther, 
St. Francis Xavier, John Wesley, General Booth and Dr. 
Barnardo were able to withstand the forces of hostility 
and indifference arrayed against them on so colossal a 
scale? They never did it in their own strength. Is their 
secret remote? Because they were men of prayer, the 
tides of the Eternal Spirit of our spirits, flowed through 
their lives, as the electricity that flows through a drill 
enables it to bore a hole through a steel plate. And the 
glory of our relationship with God lies in the fact that 
he is equally accessible to all on the same conditions. 


132 Now I Know 


None of these men had any favoritism shown to him in 
his approach to the sources of strength. 

Every one of us longs for power. Who does not wish 
for greater strength, body, mind and soul? The tragedy 
connected with our weakness lies in our failure to draw — 
upon the credit that has been established for us in an 
inexhaustible storehouse of spiritual energy. Connection 
can always be made with it by any one who has mastered 
the simple art of prayer. It is available at all times for 
direction into the channels of noble conduct, finer sensi- 
bilities, more intelligent citizenship and Christ-like char- 
acter. 


IX 


That I have not mentioned the objections raised by 
those on the outside in regard to prayer, which in one 
form or another also rise in all our minds in certain 
moods, is not due to my failure to appreciate them. It 
has seemed better to let my positive experiences speak 
first and show in that way how difficulties which seem 
great when viewed in themselves, will fade on trial into 
minor importance. That always takes place when a man 
perseveres in trying to find the secret of availing prayer. 
With William Blake, he learns to “‘see infinity in a grain 
of sand and eternity in an hour.” He realizes that the 
puzzling features which baffle and confuse him when he 
is looking on at prayer from the outside sink out of sight 
when he penetrates within. 

A frequent objection to prayer is the contention that 
since God knows what we need, it is an indication of 
doubt or of selfishness on our part to ask him for gifts 
whether spiritual or material. Apart from any request 
we make, it is said, he will give us what is for our good. 
But this objection is based on a too one-sided idea of 
prayer. It does not take into account the full extent of 
action and interaction between personalities, and prayer 
has no meaning if God is not a person. We do not do 


Wuat I Know Axsout PRAYER 133 


all the asking and God does not do all the giving. The 
interpenetration goes deeper far. The objection could 
be equally raised that a wise parent knows the needs of 
his child better than the child. Yet no parent could be 
happy if his son did not ask him for gifts and thank him 
for his favors. In the closer intimacies thus established, 
he can give ever so much more of himself than if his son 
were to keep silent and take everything for granted. 

True prayer always results in the movement of the 
soul into terms of relationship with God in which bless- 
ings become possible that were impossible before. For ex- 
ample, when we have learned to forgive those who have 
sinned against us and God forgives us, the sense of divine 
reconciliation exercises an epoch-making formative influ- 
ence upon our characters. Prayer is the main highway 
to new capacity to receive and appreciate blessings. Thus 
it must be both reasonable and right to persevere in these 
more intimate forms of intercourse with God or the ef- 
fect of their reaction upon the soul would not be to in- 
crease its stature. Hence prayer is a chief means of spir- 
itual growth. Through its exercise, the soul learns to 
thread its way into the larger meanings of life. By the 
inward strength of its own desires, it discovers new 
points of contact with God. 

But the most frequent and strongest objection to prayer 
is that which arises from the modern scientific outlook 
upon life. Cause and effect from this standpoint appear 
to be so linked together that results seem to be predeter- 
mined and outside of possibility of change or modifica- 
tion. How can we pray for the recovery of a sick child 
if we believe that its illness is due to germs that have been 
introduced into its body by impure milk which must run 
their course in accordance with an unvarying law? In 
the course of his fall from an aeroplane, is not it futile 
for a man to pray that he will not be crushed when he 
strikes the ground? Will prayer prevent the wind from 


134 Now I Know 


blowing, fire from burning or water from drowning the 
man who is submerged 4 

The overwhelming probability to the contrary prompted 
Tyndall to make his famous proposal that two wards 
in a hospital should be selected, in one of which the 
patients should be treated by medical science only and 
in the other by prayer alone to find which is the more 
effective. Owing to the progress of psychology, it is 
safe to say that no scientific man of standing would 
make so crude a suggestion today. In the first place, 
it would be impossible to isolate any of the patients from 
the effects of prayer. Every mother prays for the re- 
covery of her child and every wife for that of her hus- 
band. Supplications for all who are in trouble are con- 
tinually being made by the devout so that the patients with 
the medical attendance would not be deprived of the 
advantange of prayers for their recovery. 

The reply to this scientific objection is that answer to 
prayer does not necessarily require any abrogation of the 
laws of God. In fact, these laws are the laws of man, 
merely uniformities of sequence which we have observed. 
A law of nature is a description of the way in which 
events follow one another. But many of these sequences 
may be modified at any time by the intervention of our 
own, directing intelligence. The match thrown in the 
waste basket sets a fire which will burn the house, but 
water thrown by us upon the flames will put them out. 
The physician introduces antitoxin into the child to de- 
stroy the germs of disease which are threatening its life. 
In so doing, neither a miracle nor a violation of natural 
law takes place, only a new combination of forces al- 
ready in existence which results in the saving of a life. 
The response of God to prayer for the recovery of one 
who is ill may be an act of intervention of the above type. 
The physician may be endowed with wisdom to apply the 
proper treatment or, under the stimulus of increased faith, 


Wuat I Know Axsout PRAYER 135 


reserves of strength may be tapped with the result that 
the disease is vanquished. 

But over and beyond every such favorable argument, 
there is no objection to prayer which the value that it has 
been to countless generations does not outweigh. It 
works and that is enough. It has brought comfort to mul- 
titudes, giving them solace in their sorrow and com- 
panionship in their loneliness. It has banished evil from 
their lives and lifted them above temptation. It has 
refined coarse sensibilities and sharpened the edge of 
many a blunted conscience. Millions have found and 
kept the way of life through its ministry. I know that 
if I pray earnestly, sincerely and habitually, I cannot 
go far wrong. Lord teach me to pray. 


i 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT CHRISTIANITY 
I 


To many this may seem an unnecessary study. They 
will say that everybody knows what Christianity is. But 
it is a safe rule to be suspicious of this “everybody” form 
of statement. Usually it does not stand the test of analy- 
sis. Since the Christian church is divided into hundreds 
of segments, it is obvious that there has not been any def- 
inite agreement as to what Christianity is up to the pres- 
ent date. How strange it is that men upon matters of 
the spirit have always been so sure of their opinions, that 
they have been ready to divide churches rather than yield 
an iota of these convictions! Little reflection should be 
necessary to show that dogmatism is a dangerous approach 
to truth. It is easy to see that other dogmatists are 
wrong; we should therefore be critical of ourselves. 

That five times five are twenty-five, is a conclusion 
which can be demonstrated to any normal mind. The 
same is true of the proposition that a straight line is 
the shortest distance between two points. But no such 
demonstration is possible, when I assert that the sub- 
stitutionary theory of the atonement is essential to Chris- 
tianity, and must be adopted instead of the governmental 
theory. Whether or not the plenary inspiration of scrip- 
ture is integral to Christian faith, it is evident that this 
doctrine cannot be proved in the sense that we can prove 
that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right 
angles. In the light of this limitation it is readily seen 
that our hold upon such a truth is only provisional at 
best. 

It should therefore be held subject to modification in 

136 


Wuat I Know Asout CuHuristTIANITy 137 


the event of new evidence. Theology like life must keep 
the doors and windows open, and always be hospitable 
to the fresh approaches of the spirit. The partisan atti- 
tude is just as damaging to the religious judgment as to 
the social or political. It is a safe rule not to be over 
emphatic about any doctrine which is susceptible of dif- 
ferent interpretations or incapable of absolute proof. If 
this rule is faithfully observed, we will never make the 
mistake of barring from the household of our faith any 
one whom Christ includes. This is the anomalous and 
embarrassing position in which the intelligent members 
of the majority of the multitudinous branches of the 
church find themselves at the present moment. Candor 
and common sense force them to admit that there are vast 
numbers of people who cannot or will not subscribe to 
their tenets, but who by all the tests of which the human 
heart knows, are as much entitled to the name Christian 
as they themselves. 
II 


The first affirmation that I can make about Christianity 
is that it is a religion. I am not using the word in any 
of its limited senses as when we speak of the Jewish or 
Roman Catholic religion. Here I am at the opposite 
pole from Parson Thwackum in Tom Jones, who deliv- 
ered himself in the following terms,—‘‘When I mention 
religion I mean the Christian religion, and not only the 
Christian religion, but the Protestant religion, and not 
only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.” 
No argument is needed to show that such a narrow out- 
look is both erroneous and unfair in the light of the 
knowledge which has developed since that worthy cleric’s 
day. Jeligion is as wide as human life. 

Religion in this sense is man’s only hope and stay. 
It unites the rude savage with the profoundest phi- 
losopher, the worshiper of ‘‘sticks and stones” with the 
worshiper of the ever-living God. Underneath all specific 
creeds and systems religion, the thing itself, is always 


138 Now I Know 


seeking more adequate expression and to make assur- 
ance doubly sure that man will live on under happier 
conditions, when disaster and death have done their worst. 
Christianity shares this conviction with every other re- 
ligious system. It no longer feels that the non-Christian 
is utterly bereft of ight. It rejoices to believe that every 
man is born with religious inclinations in which lie the 
potency and promise of everlasting life. Out of our 
common human frailty and ignorance religion is born. 
Overwhelmed by the mystery and majesty of the uni- 
verse, as man in his weakness and littleness gropes in the 
darkness for comfort and support, he discovers his kin- 
ship with his fellows of every race, creed and clime. I 
know that Christianity is one form of this universal at- 
tempt to find God. 
TIT 


This knowledge however does not carry me far enough, 
since it does not differentiate Christianity from other re- 
hgions. Nor is mere assertion of its supremacy among 
the other forms of faith sufficient. Because I believe 
in that supremacy does not make it so. Jew, Moham- 
medan and Buddhist are alike convinced that their faith 
is the highest revelation. How can I state the facts in 
such a manner that men of open mind will see that the 
Christian way is the surest and best approach to God? 

The essential thing to remember in this connection is 
that Christianity is the religion of Jesus Christ. Therein 
hes its sole appeal for the undivided franchise of the 
human race. If any one would learn the difference be- 
tween Christianity and Mohammedanism his answer lies 
in the difference between Christ and Mohammed. There 
is an abundance of evidence available as to the character 
and purpose of these two founders of faiths which are 
both contending for the mastery of the world, so that we 
are justified in accepting the conclusion indicated by 
that evidence. ‘‘By their fruits ye shall know them.” 
This is equally true when we compare Christ and any 


Wuat I Know Azsout CHRistiaANity 139 


other founder or chief exponent of religion. While there 
is an intimate and integral relationship between Chris- 
tianity and Judaism, there is also a fundamental differ- 
ence. Judaism reached unsurpassable heights of spiritual 
aspiration and illumination in some of the psalmists and 
prophets, but in Christ this aspiration and light produced 
its full harvest of character. The former gave voice to 
truths of wonderful beauty thus placing mankind for- 
ever in their debt. But Christ was the Truth. Micah 
could say in words of matchless beauty, ““What doth the 
Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, 
and to walk humbly with thy God?’ Because Christ had 
transmuted these true and beautiful sentiments into 
terms of his own being, he could affirm with higher truth 
and immeasurably greater cogency, “I am the way, the 
truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but 
by me.” 

The character of Christ is definitely revealed in detail 
in the four gospels. They describe the impact of that 
character upon the generation in which he exercised his 
earthly ministry. His message was himself; we cannot 
separate him from his words. What he was preached 
for him better than what he said. This is the explana- 
tion of his power. Sympathy, purity, integrity, humility, 
courage, righteousness, and every other grace and virtue 
were daily sermons of his preached by his daily life. 

As a leader or example, however, he did not stand 
apart from mankind in splendid isolation. He identified 
himself with the race in all its needs, in its sorrows and 
aspirations. He endured every humiliation and made 
every sacrifice to make this identification absolute. 
Therein lies the explanation of his ability, possessed 
in like degree by no other founder of a religion, to gen- 
erate in every man who comes under his influence a char- 
acter of the same quality as his own. The faithful fol- 
lower of Christ becomes like him in motive and conduct. 
Christ is the vine; the disciple is the branch. In this 


140 Now I Know 


integral relationship is found the secret of the disciple’s 
strength and the fruit he bears, in spirit and in action. 
I know Christianity as the religion which originated in 
Christ, and his experience of all the sorrows, limitations, 
hopes and aspirations of the race. JI know it as the re- 
ligion which is ever taking new shape by the propelling 
power of his love in lives which reveal his spirit alike 
in motive and in conduct. 


IV 


In human nature there is an ineradicable desire to 
rationalize or explain every experience. Christianity is 
too momentous and vital a movement to be made an ex- 
ception to his rule, and multitudes of attempts have been 
made to show what it is and how it works. Strangely 
enough most of these attempts betray an utter disre- 
gard of the possibility of new light in the future. They 
have usually been looked upon as the final word, and have 
fettered the free movement of the spirit when so accepted. 
A theology is one outcome of Christianity because of this 
drive in the mind to define or describe its essential genius. 
Theology is the explanation of religion. Without mini- 
mizing its importance, it is obvious that the explanation of 
a thing can never be as important as the thing itself. 
Theology is thus of secondary value. Religion is so 
deep, vital and universal that every age has tried to ex- 
plain it, just as it has tried to explain the growth of 
plants, the processes of the mind, or the movements 
of the stars. Sometimes these explanations have been 
pitifully inadequate or even grotesque, yet this has not 
invalidated the reality of the experience they have sought 
to explain. To explain a pestilence as due to the anger 
of the gods, does not alter the fact that it destroyed many 
lives. To say that the sun has set indicates that dark- 
ness has arrived, even though it is not a correct descrip- 
tion of what has actually taken place. 

Since there probably never can be a complete and final 


Wuat I Know Axzsout CuHuRrIstTIANITY 141 


explanation of religious experience, it must be remem- 
bered that theology is always provisional. Because it 
takes the color of the age in which it is formulated, it 
needs to be revised as our horizons change, just as our 
theories of chemistry and physics require revision, as new 
facts are discovered. Thus the Westminster Confession 
of Faith is silent upon the Fatherhood of God and his 
love. It has nothing to say about missions and although 
the kingdom of heaven is the central theme in the teaching 
of Jesus it is only mentioned incidentally. In its posi- 
tive utterances, that confession affirms that the world was 
made in six days; that by the decree of God some men 
are fore-ordained to everlasting death; that through the 
original corruption of our nature we are utterly indis- 
posed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly 
inclined to all evil. It calls Roman Catholics idolaters, 
and brackets them with infidels. It implies that dying 
infants who are not elect, suffer eternal punishment. 
One of my earliest recollections is the constantly reiter- 
ated statement of a worthy Presbyterian elder, whose per- 
sonal life was far better than his theology, that “hell 
is paved with infants not a span long.” ‘The poor man 
lived to see this doctrine repudiated by the minds of his 
children. His gruesome theology turned his son into an 
agnostic. Such results always follow the failure of the 
church to adjust its theology to the new light of its age. 

What I have said above is not meant to imply that I 
think the Westminster Confession of Faith was not a 
notable intellectual achievement. On the contrary the 
best thought of the time in which it took shape went into 
its making. The men who framed it, however, had 
no prescient gifts which enabled them to anticipate the 
discoveries of the future. They were in the dark in re- 
gard to the enlarged knowledge of the Bible and of hu- 
man nature, the clearer vision of the divine purpose, 
the growing complexity of society and a thousand other 
factors of our life to-day. To continue to use their con- 


142 Now I Kyow 


clusions as the standard by which to test the validity of 
our opinions upon theological questions is not only irra- 
tional but does both them and ourselves a grave injustice. 
Theology bears about the same relation to religion that 
botany bears to the growth of plants, a map to the coun- 
try it describes, or astronomy to the movements of the 
stars. Botany, maps and astronomy change as our knowl- 
edge of plants, topography of the country and the move- 
ments of the stars enlarge. So theology must change its 
form as men adjust their thought to the new truth that 
is continually rewarding their researches. ‘The theology 
of an age which believed that we lve in a three-story 
universe about 6000 years old with a basement of burn- 
ing brimstone for the wicked, a first floor for probationers 
and a third floor for the redeemed, is utterly impossible 
in an age which measures the universe of time and space 
in terms of distances requiring thousands of years for 
the light of unknown stars to reach an earth, that is no 
longer the center of the universe, but relatively to other 
cosmic bodies a mere fleck of dust. Religion on the 
other hand is the same experience in every age. ‘The af- 
firmation “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the 
shadow of death, I will fear no evil’ strikes no less 
reverberating a chord of assurance in my heart than 
it did in that of my forbears who were also able to find 
consolation in it, though they believed that the earth was 
flat, and that the majority of the human race were fore- 
ordained to ‘‘adamantine chains and penal fire.” 
Relatively unimportant though theology be compared to 
religion, this does not mean that one theology is as good 
as another, nor that we should be content with less than 
the best. On the contrary we should give our sincerest 
thought to the problems of the soul and its relations with 
God. While maps are not as valuable as the land they 
describe, we want the best maps possible and are always 
improving upon those we have. So too it must be in our 
explanations of the nature of God, man, sin, salvation, 


Wuat I Know Axsout CHRISTIANITY 143 


and immortality. As we realize, however, the inadequacy 
of any and all human explanations of these truths that 
are rooted in infinity, we will neither be scornful of those 
who disagree with us, nor will we seek to impose our opin- 
ions upon others. Theology changes, but Jesus Christ is 
the same yesterday, and to-day and forever. 


Vv 


It is a law of life that everything vital seeks to find 
outward and visible embodiment. Christianity, there- 
fore, is an institution as well as a religion and a theol- 
ogy. Thus Christianity would have become a spent force 
before it had traveled very far had it not been organized 
into the church. The spirit that freed men from bond- 
age to sin and death found for itself a body in the world- 
wide institution, bearing the name of Christ, which in 
spite all its defects has withstood the attrition of the cen- 
turies. Those who tell us that membership in the church 
is not essential to spiritual welfare overlook this funda- 
mental law that everything vital must have an instrument 
through which to act. Sentiments however noble that 
do not have an institution through which to bring their 
influence definitely to bear upon men and society are 
doomed to disappear. 

A few months before the election of Mr. Harding, 
there was a nation-wide though undirected movement in 
favor of Mr. Hoover for President. Men of every shade 
of political opinion, recognizing his remarkable organiz- 
ing power, and moved by his splendid service in Europe, 
were enthusiastic in urging his candidacy. But the senti- 
ment died out as rapidly as it had arisen. The organized 
politicians were behind the one candidacy but there was 
no organization through which the other could function. 
If an organism had been available through which it 
could operate as the mind operates through the body, 
it would have swept all opposition before it, but with- 
out such an instrument it was as futile as dynamite ex- 


144. Now I Know 


ploded in the open. This analogue explains the necessity 
for the church, through which the vague desires for right- 
eousness which are floating about amorphously in millions 
of minds can function. It condenses them, confines them 
and directs them into practical channels for definite 
ends. The abolition of slavery, the prohibition of the 
liquor traffic and the achievement of a finer public con- 
science upon many issues, are examples of this process. 
Christianity, like every other manifestation of life, must 
operate through an organism to be effective. 

This is not at all intended to mean that the institution 
is the all important thing, as is believed by those who 
make the church an end in itself. The church has mean- 
ing and value only as the spirit of Christ functions 
through it, which is another way of saying as it embod- 
ies truth, justice, love, forgiveness, mercy, and the as- 
surance of immortality. If it seeks to put shackles on 
sincere opinion, or to impose artificial tests, such as 
forms or methods for its sacraments, it violates the spirit 
of Christ, and ceases to be an adequate vehicle of his 
purpose. But however many and tragic the blunders of 
the church, Christianity can not get along without a 
body of this kind through which to operate and reach 
the masses of mankind. The fact that the body it now 
has is crippled by self-inflicted wounds, does not justify 
the conclusion that Christianity could survive without 
it. With all its defects, which are after all the defects 
of our human nature, the church is essential to Chris- 
tianity. The business of those who see these defects is 
to work for their removal, by inducing the church to in- 
corporate within itself a larger measure of the spirit of 
Christ. 


VI 


Christianity is also a program for the making of a bet- 
ter world. That the world is wrong is not due to any 
lack of plans for setting it right. These modern days are 


Wauat I Know Asovut CHRISTIANITY 145 


witnessing a remarkable fecundity in the formulation of 
schemes which are guaranteed by their authors to be the 
way to usher in the Kingdom of God. Strangely enough 
Christianity is usually overlooked by the advocates of 
these plans for the regeneration of mankind. Yet Chris- 
tianity embraces all that is vital in such panaceas, and 
itself offers the one true program of redemption. The 
fatal defect of every scheme which is not religious in its 
originating impulse, no matter how worthy its object, or 
how well it appears on paper, is its failure to take suffi- 
cient account of the ignorance, the intrinsic selfishness, 
and the inertia of human nature. It is not enough 
to know the right; there must be the persevering will to 
do it. Some years ago two gifted thinkers, Mr. and Mrs. 
Sidney Webb, collaborated in writing a socialistic con- 
stitution for Great Britain. It is an able document. The 
duties and responsibilities of each group in the commun- 
ity are set forth with admirable clarity. Committees are 
provided for every function that their fertile imagination 
could foresee would be needed. One essential factor, 
however, is overlooked, and unfortunately this oversight 
invalidates the entire plan. One wheel or lever lacking 
from my watch, makes it useless as a timepiece, and one 
factor missed from a human equation, may render the 
conclusion utterly erroneous. What Mr. and Mrs. Webb 
did not estimate aright is human nature. Their plan 
would be most excellent if all men were unselfish, intelli- 
gent and devoted to the common weal. Only in that event 
it would not be necessary. 

Right at this point the superiority of the Christian 
program becomes most evident. It is the most radical 
of all proposed cures for our social ills, using the word 
“‘radical”’ in its true sense of going to the root of the mat- 
ter. Christianity instead of working from without in- 
wards, works from within outwards. It begins at the 
core, and the core is the human heart. That must be 
transformed before the unselfish man becomes public 


146 Now I Know 


spirited or the dishonest man honest. If the ideal com- 
monwealth is to be established, better materials must en- 
ter into its composition than those available now. These 
cannot be furnished by any legal or legislative scheme. 
Regeneration alone will produce them. 

Nor should this argument be construed as indicating 
that I have fallen into the mistake of neglecting the so- 
cial values of religion. It is not enough to Christianize 
men in their individual relations. That is a contradic- 
tion in terms. Man is a social being. He touches the 
lives of others continually and if he thinks only of his 
own spiritual welfare, paradoxical though it may ap- 
pear, he soon has little or no spiritual welfare left to 
think of. The health of the soul depends upon its func- 
tioning in cooperation with others for the highest social 
ends that it knows. Mankind will never be saved by sav- 
ing individuals, as evangelists of an older generation be- 
heved, for while one man is being redeemed from the un- 
derworld, the forces of evil are corrupting another to 
take his place. The stream of life must be purified at 
the source. Vicious environments will have to be cleansed 
before many of the best children have their right chance 
to grow into good citizens. 

This is more revolutionary than it appears on the sur- 
face. For it means that Christianity must be made to 
function in every department of life, whereas at present 
it functions only in a few. Business, industry, housing, 
education, will all have to be transformed by the same 
process which makes the individual over new. The func- 
tioning of the spirit of Christ on a generous scale in every 
department of human enterprise is the one cure for a dis- 
tempered world. That alone will eliminate distrust, an- 
tagonism, fear, greed, class conflict and all the other evil 
passions which at present disturb and imperil the so- 
cial body. The spirit of Christ as interpreted and ap- 
plied in the story of the Good Samaritan is as essential 


Wuart I Know Asovut CuristTIANItTy 147 


in the relations of nations and classes as in the relations 
of individuals. 


Vil 


Still another affirmation can be made about Christian- 
ity. It is a perpetual process of enlargement. Jesus began 
his ministry by a proclamation of good news. In 
the beginning Christianity was glad tidings and it is 
so still. It throws a flood of light upon our immediate 
problems. It also opens the way to the more spacious 
days that are yet to be. In the working out of the pro- 
gram to which reference has been made, many baffling 
questions arise. The ery of Thomas is often on men’s 
hps—“‘How can we know the way?’ What is social 
justice? a fair wage or profit? the right method to deal 
with the violator of law? What should the other na- 
tions do when some government oppresses a minority in 
a remote country? How far are we justified in building 
tariff walls against other peoples? What should our at- 
titude be toward the persecuted subjects of belated lands 
who seek asylum on our shores? What is liberty? Chris- 
tianity gives the answer to every such question in prin- 
ciple but not in specific terms. The answer is indirect 
rather than direct. In stimulating the conscience and 
the will to take its principles and work out their applica- 
tions, it furnishes the key to the solution of every such 
problem. 

To men of the legalistic type of mind this is unsatis- 
factory. They want to be told explicitly what their 
duty is. When such specific commands are not forth- 
coming, they usually act as if that meant to them that 
the Christian message has no light to throw upon the 
problem under discussion. This accounts for the strik- 
ing inconsistences in the lives of many professing 
Christianity. Personally they are devout and virtuous, 
but in their social, political and industrial relations, 
they are often hard and unjust. I have in mind a pious 


148 Now I Know 


manufacturer of great wealth, who gave several thousand 
pounds to furnish and equip an electric hight plant for 
a mission of his church in Africa. Many of his em- 
ployees were suffering at the time from an avoidable oc- 
cupational disease, induced by long hours of labor un- 
der evil conditions, aggravated by the unsanitary houses 
he provided for them. Such men perceive no incon- 
eruity between their professed loyalty to Christ and 
their unchristian conduct. They justify themselves on 
the ground that after they pay their employees as they 
have agreed, all that remains belongs to them. 

In this failure to permit the temper of Christ to func- 
tion in the management of business and industry, we 
have the roots of the alienation of the masses of the 
working people from the church. They claim that the 
church sides with the employer because of his large con- 
tributions. Nevertheless, there are signs of a new and 
better order on the horizon. The gospel of Christ can- 
not be smothered permanently and prevented from ap- 
plying its own true solution to our every problem. Much 
of the discontent in the world can be traced to an in- 
creasing recognition that present social, political and 
industrial standards are not in harmony with the teach- 
ings of Jesus. It is only the latest chapter of the same 
discontent that Christianity has been sowing ever since 
it became an established influence in history. The gospel 
has been the source of a growing enlightenment through 
the centuries. The consequent heightening of both the 
private and public conscience in turn has found a way to 
spiritual advance. 

If any one is in doubt as to whether the average level 
of virtue is superior in our day to the level of any previ- 
ous age, his uncertainty will be relieved by acquiring 
a modest knowledge of history. Whatever phase of life 
is uppermost in his mind, he will soon learn that our 
standards in that department are higher than those of 
any previous generation. This is true of both the pri- 


Wauat I Know Axsout Curistraniry 149 


vate and public morals, and particularly evident in 
the increase of humanitarian sentiment. The cruelty of 
our ancestors of even a century or two ago, with men of 
high position present and exulting in savage glee at the 
public execution of criminals, is revolting to our sensi- 
bilities. ‘To visualize how far we have advanced in less 
than three centuries, we need only to remember the decapi- 
tation of Oliver Cromwell’s body after it was exhumed, 
and that his head was impaled before the public gaze on 
the exterior of Westminster Hall, where it remained for 
years exposed to the weather. 

The cause of these changes for the better, slow and 
uncertain though they are, is the enlightening influence 
of the gospel which is always at work establishing itself 
more firmly in old areas of life, and originating new cen- 
ters of activity. To a far greater degree than most scien- 
tists recognize, they are in the line of succession which 
goes back to the early scholars of the Christian church. 
The patient research of these old churchmen laid the 
foundations of modern knowledge, for their actuating 
motive is expressed in the inspiring words, “Ye shall 
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” 


VIII 


Doubtless Christianity may be defined in many other 
aspects and in other terms than those I have mentioned ; 
but in conclusion I call attention to one which is suffi- 
cient by itself to commend it to mankind. It is an ethic 
which is both a satisfying ideal, and still within the realm 
of practical achievement. It sets before men character 
of a definite type, and apart from the character of its 
devotees it makes no successful appeal to intelligent 
leaders of the race. Except Christians give a demonstra- 
tion of its superiority in their conduct, it can never hope 
to win the allegiance of the world. Christianity must 
stand or fall by its own test. “By their fruits, ye shall 
know them.” As a dear old bishop was wont to say 


150 Now I Know 


to his clergy, “Commend your gospel to your people by 
the grace, beauty, and integrity of your own lives.”” No 
claims of authority or of the special sanctions of God 
can be made a substitute for a favorable verdict based 
upon the free and open scrutiny of the fruits of Chris- 
tianity, in fair and candid comparison with those of other 
religions. 

Nor has the most timid Christian any reason to shrink 
from this test. Whoever is convinced that Christ is the 
supreme revelation of God, and his gospel “the power 
of God unto salvation,” will not fear a comparison of the 
fruits of Christianity with those of any other faith. 
For the world knows no higher standard of measure- 
ment than character, and true Christianity asks for no 
favored treatment in the open court of opinion. “Show 
me thy faith by thy works’’ was the demand St. James 
made of those who were disposed to disregard the ne- 
cessity of proving their claims of superiority for the re- 
hgion they professed by superior conduct. The doctrine 
that good works are not essential to salvation is one of 
the most pernicious of heresies. Where there is salva- 
tion, there are good works. The victory of Christianity 
over the non-Christian faiths will never be won by argu- 
ments that attempt to show its supremacy on theoretical 
grounds. We may as well face the facts at once. If we 
would convert the Jews to believe that ours is the true 
religion, there is only one way. Appeals to prophecy 
will never do it. The claim that the teachings of Jesus 
are nobler than those of the Old Testament will also fail. 
Unless there are in the everyday life of Christians dis- 
tinctive evidences of a deeper faith and serenity of soul, 
a greater purity of motive and simplicity and integrity 
of character, Christianity will never be victorious over 
its rivals. 

The norm or model of manhood in the Christian ethic 
is the character of Christ illuminated by his teaching as 
set forth in the gospels and by its redemptive power in 


Wuat I Know Asovut CHristTiIAnItTy 151 


history. Service in behalf of the blessed community, 
the kingdom of heaven, is its basic principle. Duty is 
its watchword, sympathy its motive, love its dynamic, 
faith its mental state. Among other qualities it em- 
phasizes are purity, humility, courage, patience, kindness, 
mercy, and thorough-going integrity, united in a living 
whole by the spirit of self-sacrifice. The observance of 
the Golden Rule is this Christian man’s chief delight. 

The question can be legitmately raised why Chris- 
tianity, if it is so exalted a system of morals, has not won 
even more signal victories. Just across the Mediteran- 
nean, within sight of Europe, lies Northern Africa, 
which once was Christian, but has for centuries been 
Mohammedan and remains practically untouched by the 
Christian influences of its European neighbors. Equally 
striking is the solidarity of the Jews within our Chris- 
tian communities. There is only one answer, and that 
is a confession. Generally Christians do not live in ac- 
cordance with the ethical principles to which they pro- 
fess allegiance. They have therefore no ground for com- 
plaint when their neighbors, near or far, discount their 
claims, and measure the worth of their faith instead by 
their conduct. The truth is but few of those who pro- 
fess to be so are really Christian. The majority have no 
vital religious experience; therefore their conduct is not 
and cannot be in full harmony with the teachings and 
example of Jesus. Hitherto our religious leaders have 
been relying mainly on Christianity as a theology and 
an institution. Before it can bear fruit in conduct there 
must be introduced a power of overcoming inertia, how- 
ever, which no system of ethics can ever furnish. Lack 
of this dynamic force is the weakness of the Ethical 
Culture Society. It generates no driving power. Where 
it appears to flourish, its members are spending the 
accumulated spiritual values inherited by them from 
previous generations. 

Christianity is the one religion which furnishes the 


152 Now I Know 


necessary energy for sustained sacrifical action. Where 
men are falling below the standard of conduct set forth 
in the Sermon on the Mount, their failure is due to a 
defective and inadequate religious experience. For a 
high morality is too rigorous in its demands to be at- 
tained by human strength of will alone. Its roots are 
always in God. The correction of those errors, short- 
comings, and positive evils, therefore, which at present 
denature the Christian witness, can only be accomplished 
by strengthening the common appreciation of Christ. 
Christianity will abolish wars, class conflicts, and greed, 
and usher in the reign of love when Christians become 
Christian. So long as our deepest roots are carnal, a 
blight will blast our testimony and appeal to the non- 
Christian. While Christianity is an ethical ideal which 
is still largely unrealized, it will transform the world, 
when those who bear the name of Christ are hid with him 


in God. 


WHAT I KNOW ABOUT THE CHURCH 


I 


A little reflection will show that we use the word 
“church” in several different senses. ‘“They are building 
a new church.” Here the reference is to a definite 
structure at a definite place, in which worshippers are 
to assemble. Take the sentence, “I go to church.” The 
meaning in this case is not that I go to a particular 
church but that I am accustomed to participate in pub- 
lic worship. Again we speak of the Presbyterian, the 
Baptist or the Roman Catholic church. These phrases 
indicate groups of the Christian world, each of which 
stands for a certain form of religious organization and 
body of doctrine and experience. Then we also use the 
word in a universal sense. We speak of the Christian 
church, including in our thought men of every shade of 
opinion who express their allegiance to Christ through 
any of the multitudinous sects into which the Chris- 
tian world is divided. And still more inclusively the word 
is used to cover all organized religion, as when we con- 
trast the church with the state. In this phrase “church” 
stands for all citizens of every faith within the nation 
who are associated for religious purposes by whatever 
name they are known. 

Yet back of all this variety of usage which makes our 
language so confusing, there is a central idea which has 
come down to us through the channel of the Old and New 
Testaments and has been enlarged not alone by the ex- 
perience of Christians in all ages but also by that of men 
of every faith. This germinal idea is the assembly or 
meeting for the public worship of God. The Christian 
church had its beginning when Jesus first gathered the 
little group of disciples around him. Under his guidance 

153 


154. Now I Know 


they meditated upon the meaning of life and its ultimate 
purpose. They turned their thought to God and asked 
for his direction in all their living. Through communion 
with him, their souls were refreshed and strengthened 
to attack their daily tasks however difficult, with a new 
sense of power and the assurance of ultimate victory. 

This would not have been possible to them had they 
been separated and deprived of the privilege of assem- 
ling together. For there is a chemistry of the spirit be- 
tween souls. Bind men together by the same sense of 
God, and in that contact tides of power are released that 
render them immeasurably stronger than the aggregate of 
their individual powers. Christianity would never have 
gained ground against a hostile or indifferent world had it 
not been for this contribution of the spirit of God working 
like leaven through the individual members and _ build- 
ing them into an organism, so that each one felt that he 
had back of him the entire power of the whole group. 
The heroism and endurance of the reformers and mar- 
tyrs of every generation can be explained only by the 
reservoir of collective strength upon which they drew 
to achieve results that would have been impossible if 
they had been dependent upon themselves alone. 


II 


Thus an essential purpose of the church is the main- 
tenance of public worship. True, a man can worship in 
private. On that account, some men make the claim 
that they do not need the church. They tell us that they 
worship in the quiet of their homes or in the silence of 
the field and forest. They go even further and say that 
in playing golf or driving over country roads, they com- 
mune with nature, which is another name for God. But 
this is fallacious. Valuable and indispensable though 
private worship is, it can never take the place of public 
worship any more than a man’s private life, howsoever 
rich, ever enables him to dispense with his social life 


Wuat I Know Asovut tur Cuurcu 155 


in company with his fellows. When a man isolates him- 
self from other men, he shuts himself and his life off 
from a vast source of power and soon there is no health 
left in him. The great achievements of the race are a 
three-sided product of the interplay between an individual, 
his fellows and God. Even the genius of the super-man 
must rest upon this tripod if it is to flower in noble 
action. Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare could never 
have sung as they did were it not that they were act- 
ing as the spokesmen of this triple experience. Only 
as we act upon our fellows and experience their reaction 
in return and feel a sense of unity with them and through 
them with God, can we draw upon the invisible reservoir 
of strength open to us for the assistance required to give 
us the victory. In the church, it has been proved beyond 
peradventure we have an effective and abiding means of 
coming into this contact with them and with God. The 
results are immediate and fruitful. In this threefold rela- 
tionship, we rise to our noblest stature. The baser elements 
of our nature are transformed and, in our renewed sense 
of God and human kinship, we perform our daily tasks 
with increased vitality. The man who lets the weeks go 
by without drawing upon this source of energy, is will- 
fully choosing a life of poverty when wealth is his for the 
asking. 

Worship may be defined as our human effort to 
express our recognition and appreciation of God’s worth. 
By means of it, we hope to understand his character 
better and to identify our aims with his more completely. 


III 


St. Peter’s answer to the question of Jesus: ““Whom 
say ye that I am?’ ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
living God,” is the rock upon which the Christian church 
is built. It seems to me that those who believe that Jesus 
referred to Peter himself as the foundation of his church 
are hopelessly wrong. Peter was too much one of us. 


156 Now I Know 


He crumpled under the minor strains of loyal disciple- 
ship soon after this confession of his faith. ‘Get thee 
behind me, Satan; thou art an offense unto me” was 
the rebuke he received from his Master. ‘Three times 
he denied his relations with Jesus on the fatal night of 
the trial. For all his redeeming qualities, he never 
became the outstanding leader in the church. Paul’s 
vision and influence were far greater. The Christian 
church would have been a Jewish sect if Peter had had 
his way, for he strove to impose the old Jewish rites upon 
all Gentile converts. At the Council in Jerusalem, where 
the issue was decided, not he but James held the place of 
eminence as president. 

Like every other institution which is to survive, the 
church must continually renew its membership. It must 
keep the spiritual perception of Peter when he said to 
Jesus, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” 
so unmistakably to the fore that that spirit will com- 
municate itself through the ranks of the rising generation. 
Too often this affirmation is made by full-grown men 
without an adequate experience of its meaning in the 
mind and heart of him who makes it. Many who pride 
themselves upon their orthodoxy are guilty on this count. 
Merely to repeat it over as a proposition which is true 
on the ground of tradition leaves the world cold. As 
Milton said, ‘““A man may be a heretic in the truth; and 
if he believes things only because his pastor says so, or 
the assembly so determines, without knowing other rea- 
son, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds 
becomes his heresy.” Hence the church needs to develop 
men able to get under the skin of tradition and lay hold 
upon the presence of God and incorporate the truth of 
the gospel within their lives. 


IV 


The church may be described, therefore, as a spiritual 
school, to bring men to Christ. Now we should not lose 


Wuat I Know Azsour tur Cyuurcu 157 


sight of the fact that the ignorant rather than the enlight- 
ened attend school. So the people to whom the church 
primarily ministers are not the good but those who realize 
how far short they fall from what they ought to be. Men 
frequently say that they are not good enough to unite 
with the church. But the church would be in a sorry 
plight if goodness were a condition of membership. If 
all who dare not think of themselves as good were to 
leave it tomorrow, who would remain? The essential 
condition of church membership is not goodness but the 
desire to be better, the hope and prayer that the nobler 
qualities of the soul may not be suppressed by worldly 
aims and physical passions, but manage to grow in the 
unity of the faith toward the fullness of the stature of 
Christ. 

The criticism of the non-churchman that many mem- 
bers of the church are not what they ought to be is 
due to the same misunderstanding of the church’s mission. 
The church is the community at worship and is therefore 
composed of the same men and women whom we meet in 
the other contacts of life. Some of them are kind and 
generous, some unkind and ungenerous. Some are public 
spirited and some are selfish and still others grade in 
between, but whatever their qualities, they are better men 
for worshiping than if they did not worship. Often their 
worship is perfunctory and formal. They do not actively 
sense its meaning and intention. But when every sub- 
traction is made that can fairly be taken into account, 
the fact remains that the church is an asset to them and 
to the community. The man who contends that he is 
as good as his neighbor who goes to church is missing 
the point. The point is that he himself is not as good 
as he would be if he used this means of advancement for 
his soul. 

Vv 


The traditional claim for the church voiced by many 
leaders is that the true church must be holy, catholic and 


158 Now I Know 


apostolic. This is dream rather than reality as far as 
present achievement goes, but it is the ultimate ideal 
toward which all loyal churchmen are moving. 

“Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.” Holi- 
ness is wholeness, healthiness in body, mind and soul. 
For generations men thought that it had to do with mat- 
ters of exterior conduct alone. Even there it was inter- 
preted in negative terms. The holy man went into the 
wilderness as a hermit or became a monk. He refrained 
from pleasure and the indulgence of appetites innocent 
in themselves but declared to be out of keeping with his 
piety. He was faithful in observing the rites imposed 
by the law but paid little attention to the inner condition 
of his soul so long as his outward acts were correct. St. 
Simeon Stylites was his ideal. 

In the New Testament teaching this is reversed. Here 
the emphasis is put upon the interior moral values of 
life. New Testament teaching passes from the negative, 
“Thou shalt not,” to the positive, “Thou shalt.” It 
requires the performance of duty not as a task but as 
the outgoing of a loving heart. The motive is spiritual 
rather than legal. Holiness is moral likeness to God. 
Man is exhorted to “be holy even as God is holy.” In 
proportion as he is holy, he is told that he exhibits divine 
qualities in his life. He is to approximate that perfect 
moral sonship of which Christ is the unique example. 
The fruits of his life are to be akin to those of Christ. 
“T am the vine, ye are the branches.” The meaning of 
this simple but striking figure is that the light and life 
and love of Christ flow from him as the sap through the 
branches into every human channel that will receive them, 
where they bear fruit like unto themselves. Holiness no 
longer consists in withdrawing from the world or in insu- 
lating ourselves from it, but in living unspotted in it 
by drawing upon the inexhaustible reservoirs of power 
which God opens to us. Because the church releases this 
divine energy its ministry makes for the holiness of all 


Wuat I Know Asout tur Cuvurcu 159 


who constitute it or come within the range of its witness 
and influence. 


VI 


Catholicity or all-inclusiveness is another mark of the 
ideal church that is ever in process of becoming. There 
are some branches of the church which claim to be cath- 
olic now but they can not produce the weight of evidence 
to sustain the zlaim before the court of the world’s jude- 
ment. The term has many meanings and varies according 
to the experience and point of view of those who use it. 
The root idea is “on the whole” or “in general” from 
which universality as a note or characteristic has been 
derived. It is in this sense that Protestants use it in 
repeating the Apostle’s Creed, whereas among Roman 
Catholics, the meaning is that given by St. Augustine, 
viz., “the observance of all divine precepts and all 
sacraments,” which makes it synonymous with orthodoxy. 
That church claims to be universal in its sovereignty, 
complete in doctrine, adapted to the needs of men of every 
type and morally and spiritually perfect. 

Though Protestants deny these claims, they do not show 
themselves consistent, for every sect among them, whether 
large or small, exhibits a marked tendency to the same 
exclusiveness of spirit. Were it not for this tendency to 
make our peculiar convictions a source of division, the 
different branches of the church would never have arisen. 
In our day we are outgrowing the feeling that the sect 
to which we belong has any priority of claim upon the 
favor of heaven. Our fathers, however, had no such 
doubts. They have left us an embarrassing legacy in 
the form of ecclesiastical organizations which cannot pos- 
sibly make a universal appeal. The creedal or dogmatic 
foundations of every sect are denied in part and in their 
emphasis by the members of most other sects. Who but 
a Baptist could believe that immersion is necessary to 
salvation? What non-Presbyterian would accept the 


160 Now I Know 


Westminster Confession of Faith as setting forth the 
system of doctrine taught in the Old and New Testa- 
ments? It is no discourtesy to the memory of John 
Wesley for the non-Methodist to deny that his sermons 
form a completely satisfactory doctrinal foundation for 
the church. Thus without exception, the formal claims 
of every body which claims to be the church of Christ 
dissolve when subjected to analysis. However satisfac- 
tory its peculiar claims are to its own members, they 
make no definite or compelling appeal to those outside 
its fold. 

This is a tragic weakness for it forces the churches 
to exclude those whom the logic of common sense also 
forces them to acknowledge as members of the kingdom 
of heaven. Surely it is pathetic that any group of dis- 
ciples claiming to represent Christ should refuse recog- 
nition and complete fellowship to those whom they admit 
their Master has received. For example, make baptism 
an absolute condition of church membership. This auto- 
matically raises a barrier against the Quaker who by his 
character offers certain proof that he has been accepted 
by Christ. Likewise doctrinal tests often exclude many 
who have been brought up in other schools of thought but 
whose experience is undeniably Christian. Any church 
which is narrower in its conditions of membership than 
the Kingdom of God is that far uncatholic and unchris- 
tian. Thus catholicity or all-inclusiveness still remains a 
far-off ideal. 

Until the different denominations among the churches 
are ready to lose their lives for Christ, this limitation 
will continue to restrict their influence. Here they have 
much to learn from science, which never requires its 
devotees to accept any principle as once for all deter- 
mined. Every axiom of science is open to the possibility 
of revision. If any one has new light to throw upon it 
he can get a hearing. In this way science is kept a 
living, growing thing. One cannot conceive a Presby- 


Wuat I Know Azsovur tur Cuurcu 161 


terlan, or Episcopal or Unitarian geography or arith- 
metic. We will never have a truly catholic church until 
Christians become a body of seekers after the meaning of 
life and destiny who expect new light to break from God’s 
word on our fundamental duties toward God and man. 

The sooner we give up this dream of a universality in 
thought wherein all men would think identically, the 
better it will be for the church and the world. Thinking 
alike is impossible where thought is real. God never 
made two maple leaves exactly alike, even upon the same 
tree, much less two human brains One of our priceless 
gifts will always be our individuality. ‘Let this mind 
be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” is an exhorta- 
tion which is in entire harmony with the right of each 
to think for himself. One of the gravest weaknesses of 
democracy is the prevalent desire to standardize thought 
and the development of the art of propaganda to which this 
leads. This can not be achieved without destroying the 
power to think creatively. The ideal commonwealth is not 
a hive of bees where freedom is restricted to the nar- 
rowest terms, but rather the well-ordered family where 
each member has all the flexibility of movement that is 
consistent with the integrity of the family’s life. If this 
principle had always been recognized, many a grievous 
schism would have been avoided. As we have already 
seen, Peter and others of like mind in the early church, 
tried to force the adoption of their narrow ideas upon 
the church, and had it not been for the vision of Paul 
supported by the liberating spirit of Christ, they would 
have succeeded and Christianity would have soon become 
a spent force. 

It is easy enough to recognize an instance of the prin- 
ciple under discussion at such a distance, but very difficult 
in a case close at hand. Within a century the Peters of 
Protestantism have tried, in some cases successfully, to 
silence and drive from the ministry of the church David 
Livingstone, Frederick W. Robertson, Bishop Colenso, 


162 Now I Know 


Albert Barnes, Norman Macleod, W. Robertson Smith, 
A. B. Bruce, Marcus Dods, Henry Drummond, Charles 
A. Briggs and others of equal eminence. Most of these 
men have been canonized since in the affections of a sub- 
sequent generation. Some of them have won immortal 
fame as heroes of the faith or flaming torches of truth. 
In the light of these mistakes made by sincere but bigoted 
men, how foolish we are to run the risk of repeating the 
same blunder. Were it not for the urge within a few 
men that pushes them on to higher ideals of thought where 
the horizons of the kingdom of the mind expand and 
sometimes open up new continents of aspiration, all 
the race would sink into the static condition which was 
for so many centuries a leading quality of Chinese life. 
Undoubtedly many innovators do go astray but the best 
method of refuting their errors is not to force them into 
silence, but to subject their views and program to free and 
thorough discussion. This is the method of the gospel. 
Let both tares and wheat grow together until the harvest. 
“Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” 

When the spirit of Christ becomes the dominant quality 
in. those who constitute the church, it will be catholic and 
all-inclusive, and not before. Each of us has a contribu- 
tion to make to this end. As we take on his nature, we 
will increase in sympathy and understanding and will 
thus do justice to those who differ from us, for our 
actions will speak a universal language. Instead of try- 
ing to force our opinions of the church and its doctrines 
upon our neighbors, we will be content to commend 
our convictions to them by such beauty of witness as 
we can command our lives to express, remembering always 
that if we fail in that, we fail in all things else. More- 
over, we will realize that the truth upon which we now 
have our grip is only provisional. We are limited both 
in knowledge and experience and will therefore not be 
so sure of ourselves as to condemn others for holding 
opinions contrary to ours. But “let knowledge grow from 


Wuat I Know Asovut tHE CuurRcH 163 


more to more” and at last men will think in catholic and 
all-inclusive terms, realizing that God’s only requirement 
of man is that he do justice and love mercy and walk 
humbly with God. 


Vil 


In addition to holiness and catholicity, the ideal church 
is also apostolic, a word which has been buffeted about 
in many a divisive controversy. The traditional meaning 
is that the authority of the church is derived from the 
apostles through the continuous chain of their successors. 
By the laying on of hands, the virtues and sanctions 
vested in them were transmitted to those who were to 
succeed them. Where this mechanical continuity is lack- 
ing, there can be no valid ministry. All exponents of 
this doctrine would agree that it excludes from the true 
church as irregular, the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian 
and all other so-called “dissenters” or “non-conformists.” 
While many Episcopalians claim that their church is 
in the legitimate apostolic line, this is denied with equal 
vigor by the Church of Rome, which recognizes no more 
virtue in the Protestant Episcopal or Anglican Church 
than in any other schismatic group. 

It is difficult for the man of scientific training or tem- 
perament to grasp the point of view of those who would 
base their claim to authority upon such narrow and 
mechanical grounds. This theory is closely akin to the 
outworn idea of the right to rank and honor on the ground 
of birth alone. While there are doubtless some lingering 
traces of that ancient superstition still surviving, it is 
doomed eventually to disappear. 

No special privileges belong to any favored group. 
There is no respect of persons with God. The only thing 
that counts is character. Where this is Christian in its 
quality, its roots are “hid with Christ in God,” which 
is another way of saying that its possessor is apostolic 
in the texture of his soul. For apostolic succession is 


164 Now I Know 


spiritual and not mechanical in its nature. Any man 
may enter it at any time and his entrance cannot be pre- 
vented by any army of prelates claiming to hold the keys. 
George Fox, John Wesley, General Booth, Dwight L. 
Moody, and a host of others known and unknown, affirm 
the fact. He who is minded to learn the truth and to 
do God’s will is in the true line of succession to the 
apostles and their Master. He holds the keys to the 
kingdom of heaven, for the influences which go out from 
his life tend to create in others the same revealing expe- 
rience which is expressed in the testimony, “Thou art 
the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Everyone who can 
say that out of the depths of his soul is an apostle. There 
is no break in the chain of personalities and the influences 
which unite him with Christ. 

One of the indelible marks of the first apostles was 
their fervor. They were enthusiastic in proclaiming the 
joy which they themselves had experienced in their knowl- 
edge of God and of the liberating gospel of Jesus and 
they were eager that others should share their newfound 
freedom with them. Thus they responded to the impulse 
which came to them from God, prompting them to go 
out into the world and tell others so that they should also 
become the possessors of the same priceless gift. The 
apostolicity of the church of to-day cannot be proved by 
historical claims based upon beliefs expressed in councils 
held in remote centuries, or by the appeal to dogmas 
formulated in the ages less enlightened than ours, but 
only by the fruits of the spirit embodied in the lives of 
those who compose its membership. Grapes do not grow 
on thorns nor figs on thistles, nor do apostles spring from 
any other soil than a Christlike mind. Where the spirit 
of Christ is, there is the church, by whatever name it 
is known. 





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